Trust
by Twirler
Summary: When Berk is attacked by a group of knight dragon riders 5 years after the film was made, will it's chosen trainees and the new chief, Hiccup, be able to face the challenge? Rated T just to be safe. Contains OCs and OC/OC.
1. Chapter One: Dragon Day

**Author's Note: Hey, this is my first fanfiction that I've ever uploaded onto this lovely website. I'm very nervous about flamers so please, don't flame if you don't like it. **

**I don't own any dragons or characters in this story other than Frida, Anton, Christian, and Kristen. **

My name is Frida and I live on the little island of Berk. Our island consists of buildings, Vikings, lots of equipment for riding things, oh.. and dragons! Dragons to us are what a cat or a dog is to you. It's a pretty dangerous way of life, but we manage to survive. The weather here on Berk isn't the best, it's usually snowing. If it's not snowing, then it's hailing or raining. It's a tough life, considering nobody knows about our island. Maybe that's a good thing, we get to keep all of the dragons to ourselves.

Every girl and boy that is 5 years of age get a Terrible Terror, the smallest type of dragon that is found here on Berk. It teaches them how to keep care of a dragon, how to keep it happy, and how to train it to be good. By the time you're 15 years old, you get to see if you are able to own a true dragon. Only the best of the best and the strongest of the strongest are chosen to own one of these large beasts, seeing that you need a lot of patience, time, and strength in order to keep them. So, every year we have a two day holiday. It's kind of like your Christmas, but the dates change here. In order for us to celebrate, we need the best weather possible.

In this two day holiday, every 15 year old in the village is lined up side by side with their Terrible Terrors in their arms. Every adult and dragon owner in the town also gather around the training ring to see if their child or brother/sister has been picked to own a dragon. The village leader, who's name is Hiccup (Strange name, I know), and the village elder also gather and slowly pick four 15 year olds from the batch. Why only four? Well, when the rules were changed and lifted seven years ago, EVERYONE took advantage of the ability to own a dragon. The little island of Berk suffered overpopulation, causing Hiccup to create the 4 person per year rule.

And soon, one by one, each teenager steps up and presents their Terrible Terror and shows everything they have taught the little dragon. When they are done, they get back in line and watch the rest go.

After each of the Terrible Terrors have been introduced, Hiccup, the village elder, and several specific vikings step away from the crowd to discuss who they are going to pick. It takes them quite a long time; 2 to 3 hours; for them to decide who is going to be chosen. After those long hours are passed, the group returns and tells everyone who is going to be chosen.

When the ceremony is completed, everyone gathers at each of the chosen teenager's houses and celebrates late into the night. Everyone in town then rests like babies and rises early the following morning to see what dragon will choose the teenager. You read correct, dragons choose US, we don't choose the dragon. Infact, we are told to keep perfectly still when each dragon is brought out.

And soon, the second ceremony begins. Each of the chosen teenagers are brought back into the training arena, where several dragons are kept waiting for them. Each of the dragons are caught fresh out of the wild the past couple nights before the second day. The first teenager steps into the arena and is locked inside with only two, bulky vikings standing off to the side just incase a dragon goes on a rampage. When the teenager stands tall and still, the first door is pulled open. You know a dragon will want to be owned by you when it steps up to you without trying to kill you off. If the first dragon in the first door doesn't want to be owned by the first teenager, it is released into the wild again while a different dragon of the same species is replaced for the next teenager. And soon the first teenager will find his or her dragon and walk off with a dandy new pet. And then in goes the next teenager.

The second day takes about 10 hours for everyone to get their dragon, and by then every adult is tired. When the choosing of dragons has ended, everyone slinks home and sleeps. Then a normal day begins. Dragon training for the four teenagers and normal work for everyone else.

This holiday is named Dragon Day, which is pretty basic. It's our biggest holiday around here and it gets even bigger when you're one of the chosen teenagers. How do I know? I was one of them two years ago. And instead of learning about how to train mine the boring way, with books, I got to train mine first hand.

It began several years ago. I was 10 years old at the time when our Viking and Dragon war ended and the different laws were lifted and added onto. When the rule was added, my parents went out to get my own Terrible Terror for me on my 11th birthday so that they could give it to me as a present.

"Here you go," my father grinned as he walked to the corner of our little house. He picked up the basket and plopped it onto the table infront of me. I stared at it through excited eyes, I jumped up and down in my seat as I peered into the basket. And inside was a small, blue dragon with teal eyes. I squealed and clapped my hands. My father and mother leaned towards me. I pulled the Terrible Terror out of the basket and hugged it close to my chest. My mother spoke, "Well, honey," she cooed and stared down my dragon, "What are you going to name it?" "Nora!" I cried for joy, "Nora, Nora, Nora!" I loved that name, infact, I wanted to be named that.

"Nora it is," my mother chirpped and wrapped an arm around my father's torso. I ignored them as they hugged each other, I was too busy staring happily down at my dragon. "Welcome home, Nora!" I giggled and stood up from my chair. I left my fur coat and boots behind as I held Nora up to my mother. "Nora!" I sang. The two looked each other straight in the eye. I could tell that Nora didn't like my mother, for it made itself sneeze on her. Not just snot came out, but a little ball of flame came out too. It caught my mother's red hair on fire. I just laughed and ran up the wooden stairs, headed straight towards my room.

Nora learned from me and I learned from it. I learned that Nora was a boy, not a girl, and how to be nice to dragons. Whenever I got too clingy to him, he would lightly snap at me or try to roar. He knew that I was little too, so he knew that he couldn't be too frightening to me. Whenever he DID snap at me, he would soon curl up at my side and fall asleep. Nora learned many things from me, like how to act around humans and some tricks.  
We became very, very close after the 4 year span that we had with each other. We were basically like twins, seeing that our personalities were the same. You wouldn't see me without him, and you wouldn't see him without me. We had a secret language that we shared through our minds. If I gave him a certain look, he would know that he did wrong. If he gave me a dragon-y smile, I would know that I did good.

But then came Dragon Day, which fell upon a few days after my 15th birthday.


	2. Chapter Two: Day One

Seeing that my birthday is somewhere in September, this Dragon Day was freezing. Everyone had their finest fur boots, coat, hats, and mittens on, yet they were still cold. If there had been snow clouds up in the air, it surely would've snowed. But because it was a beautiful, clear day, it didn't. The news about Dragon Day gets out quickly and a bit spur of the momentish. Hiccup steps outside early in the morning each day until a nice, rain, snow, and hail free day. The Dragon Day that year happend to fall upon a few days after my birthday. I was lucky, some people had to wait several months until it was their turn for Dragon Day.

"Wake up," my father said as he stomped into my room, a grin plastered to his beard-covered face. I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach. I hadn't been told that it would be Dragon Day, so I figured that my father was getting me up just to get me up. He was like that, he got lonely sometimes. He knew that I would keep him company, even if all I did was play around with Nora. "No," I grunted, my head buried into the fur blankets. My dad's Viking hands pulled around my two feet and physically pulled me out of bed. I landed on the ground with a loud clatter as I howled. The floor was cold! I jumped up to my feet, shivering from my recent contact with the icy floor, as I glared at my father.

"You know I don't like getting-" I snorted, but my father placed a single finger up to his mouth. When I stopped talking, he removed his finger from his mouth and spoke, "It's your time to shine, Frida." "What?" "Today is Dragon Day!" I gaped, my mouth hanging wide open. Nora, who had been laying in bed with me, jumped up to my shoulder and stared at my father. His little nose flared as he made a purring noise in his throat, nuzzling his neck with his head. I patted his head and sighed. My father put his hands on his bulky hips and walked out of the room as he cried, "Hurry up and get ready! We don't have much time!"

I nodded as he pulled out of my room and walked up to a little desk in the corner of my room. Ontop of it's wooden surface were my formal fur coat and boots, the ones that I rarely wore. I let my hand run through the coat's fur as I pulled it over my shoulders. I picked the boots up into my hands and glanced at Nora. "You have to be on your best behavior," I said in a quiet tone. He bobbed his head up and down in response as I stumbled out of my room and down the wooden stairs. I found my father wating impatiently by the door, his face pulled into a nervous expression. I couldn't blame him, butterflies were jumbling around wildly in the pit of my stomach.

My redheaded father saw me coming and opened up the door for me. A blast of the frigid, September air greeted me as I stepped outside. There were lots of people walking the narrow streets of Berk's village, everyone wearing their thick, formal fur clothing. I joined the large group and kicked nervously at a pebble as I moved along with the crowd. In the distance, I could hear the faint roar of dragons that were locked inside cages, waiting to pick their human. I shuddered because the roars were mournful and sad, almost as if they were dying.

I looked up and stared at the sky, which was dyed a light pink due to sunrise, and grinned. I saw several dragon riders that had been picked the previous year, flying with their dragons high up in the sky. I wondered if they had been as nervous as I was. And soon, the large group that I was walking in slowly neared the dragon arena. I could feel Nora wriggling around on my shoulder as he saw the arena, too. I figured that he was remembering where he had been picked up from.

Nora let out a little roar of protest as I neared the entrance of the Dragon Arena, and I let out a nervous sigh. There was an older Viking standing guard of the gate, just to make sure anyone younger than the age of 15 wouldn't sneak into this place. At the time, I didn't understand why people younger than 15 could be allowed to ride a dragon, but then I found how dangerous it could be.

The Viking standing guard looked at me up and down, eyeing my dragon. I opened my mouth to speak, "Good morning, sir. I'm here for-" He rolled his eyes and looked down at the little piece of paper in one of his hands. "State your name," he grunted and looked at me again. "Frida." "What's your Terrible Terror's name?" "Nora." I watched him look down at his list again, his eyes scanning the list of names and dragon names. His eyes stopped scanning when he came across my name. He bobbed his head up and down as he snatched one of the pieces of paper out of the many in his other hand. On the paper was a number. "You're number 24," he stated matter-of-factly and handed it to me. "Please put it somewhere on you," he mumbled as he pulled a lever. And with a large amount of noise, the gate opened enough for me to squeeze through. I grabbed the number paper and stepped through to join the other people my age.

My nice boots got some dust on them as I dragged my feet while joining the line. The butterflies in my stomach were now multiplying and all of them were ferociously pounding my stomach like a hammer. I gulped as I joined the side of a boy with orange hair, a viking helmet sitting at the top of his head. He looked at me, my dragon, and my number, which I had plastered on my chest. His Terrible Terror, orange and red in color, was wrapped around his arm like some sort of snake. He smiled at me, "You nervous too?" I nodded sheepishly as I looked around the arena, my eyes scanning all of the Vikings that were gathered. The whole town!

The boy cleared his throat, making me look at him. He stuck out a friendly hand. He stated a classic introduction, "Hiya. My name's Anton and this is Buckley," he raised his arm, showing off his red and orange dragon. He asked, "What's your name?" I looked down to my feet and refused to look at every adult who was staring at me. "Frida," I murmered, "And this is Nora." I could feel Anton's eyes locked on my Terrible Terror, who was sleeping on my shoulder.

I learned quite a few things as we all waited for the other 15 year olds to join us. I learned that Anton was cheeky, playful, and talkative. I also learned that his father owned a Zippleback and his mother owned a Gronckle. He basically KNEW that he was going to get a dragon of his own. He bragged a lot to, but not on purpose. I personally didn't like people who bragged, but this guy was different. I don't know how to explain, but he just was.

After what seemed like ages, every 15 year old was in the Dragon Arena. My best friend, Danica, was the second to last who had come. I waved wildly to her and she waved wildly back. We were both excited. But, now we had to wait for Hiccup. The chief of the village was almost ALWAYS late. He was 16 years old, quite young to be a chief in my opinion, but he had no other choice. His father had been killed on a Monstrous Nightmare's rampage two years ago, and he was the next in line.  
The mighty roar of a Night Fury rung through everyone's ears, making several, including me, jump out of our skins. Some of our older vikings who had been in the war against Dragons for many years prepared themselves to attack, but then they calmed down when the Night Fury was close enough to see. On the back of it's shiny, black scales was the rider, Hiccup. Toothless, the Night Fury's nickname, landed straight smack in the middle of the Dragon Arena's caged outside.

Hiccup climbed off of the saddle he had made just for Toothless and smiled at everyone around him. "Good morning," he said loudly enough for everyone in the area to hear. Everyone grumbled a quiet 'Good morning,' back as the chief continued. "Welcome to another fine Dragon Day! Toothless and I are proud to say that this is the fourth Dragon Day that Berk has ever had!" Several people cheered. "Alright, this year there are thirty-one teenagers entered into this year's Dragon Day. The rules are still the same, four of these Terrible Terror owners will be chosen to own a dragon of their own. And without further ado, let's get this show on the road!" Everyone cheered. Hiccup cotinued, "Entry number one, please step forth!"

A pretty girl with pretty, blonde hair and a pink Terrible Terror stepped up and curtsied. And then things began. The girl spoke in an annoying tone, the one you would have when you have a plugged nose. Her dragon, who's name was Marie, wasn't very impressive in my opinion. It acted just like it's owner, snotty and stuck up. Finally, her act ended several minutes later. I watched Hiccup write something down and show it to the village Elder. When she nodded, he sat up and spoke up. "Entry number two, please step forth!" And so that went on.

Then, it was Anton's turn. Nora watched the red and orange dragon as I watched he himself. I was sure that there were over 500 butterflies in my stomach now. But, I tried to calm them by watching all of the tricks Anton had taught Buckley. I was impressed, that little Terrible Terror knew a lot! But then, the butterflies returned when he stepped back into line. I shuddered as Hiccup's voice rung out, "Entry number twenty-four! Please step forward!" I could feel everyone's eyes shift towards me as I stepped a few paces forward.

I removed Nora from my shoulder and set him lightly on the ground, secretly stroking his back. He stared up at me, all of his attention on me. He knew what this was. I made a quick gesture with my hands, and he ran around the whole arena, like I had asked him to. When he returned, I pointed up to the sky, he did a flip in the air. This was going exactly as we had practiced. I squatted down enough for Nora to be able to jump up onto my head, and he did. Like I had trained him, he balanced on one hind leg ontop of my head. With his dark wings outstretched and his face as still as a statue, he looked elegant. I stood up with him still on my head. I rocked my head back and forth and he didn't fall. I smiled up at the croud as he slid off of my head on command. I caught him in both of my arms and placed him on the ground again. Then we did the basics like.. sit, stay, roll over, play dead, fly, breathe fire, and all of that boring stuff.

I bowed and stepped back into the line when I was done. I was panting and so was Nora, but we were both smiling at each other. Anton was gaping at me as he whispered, "Dude! You're going to get chosen!" I looked at him and laughed, "And how do you know that?" "I've never seen the Village Elder so impressed!" I waved my hand at him playfully, "Oh stop that," I laughed and watched the rest of the fifteen year olds have a turn.

Finally, everyone was done. Now the real stress came, the choosings. Hiccup's voice rung out, "Thank you! All of you were fantastic and I would choose all of you if I could! But only the best four will be able to be chosen. We will go and decide now. Thanks for your patience! Oh, and entries. Stay exactly where you are. That is all." He grinned again lead the Village Elder to her own dragon, an old Nadder, and the two vikings that came with to their dragons, both Gronckles. Then, he slipped onto Toothless and the four zoomed off to a place unknown.

All of us stared at each other. I looked at Anton and his dragon. He looked at me. We smiled nervously at each other as we sat down in the dirt, shivering like mad. 2 hours of this cold and pressure could do nasty things to you. The low hum of people's hushed conversations flittered about in the icy breeze. I knew exactly what everyone was talking about. Who was going to get chosen.

Anton and I didn't speak for the whole two hours that we had to wait. We just drew pictures in the dust of the Dragon Arena, pretty boring, I know. But we didn't know what to say anymore, and besides, there were nasty lumps in their throats. Then came the roar of Toothless again. Finally, two long hours were passed.

The four dragons landed and the riders slipped off of them, looking proudly down at us. Hiccup pulled out a little sheet of paper with the winner's names scribbled on them. He held the paper up and announced, "We have chosen!" Everyone who was once chittering away were now dead silent. "This year's was probably the hardest decision, and we would like to say that we are very proud of all of you!" Hiccup paused, "And now.. on with the winners!" People broke down in cheers. It took about three minutes for them to quiet down.

"Here they are!" The chief stated loudly. "Please remember that this listing is NOT in order from best to worst!" I rolled my eyes, come on, just announce who won already. "Entry number eleven with Christian and Hedda!" The parents, family, and friends of Christian erupted with sobs of joy and cheers. "Entry number twenty three with Anton and Buckley!" I glanced wildly at him and cheered, "Yay! Congrats!" He grinned and gave me the thumbs up. Yeah, he knew that he was going to get a dragon. "Entry number twenty-seven with Kristin and Sebastian!" My heart sunk. I wasn't a chosen one. But wait! There was one place left. I closed my eyes and prayed and prayed and prayed. "And as our final chosen one.. Entry number twenty-four with Frida and Nora!"

I opened my eyes and pinched myself. Had Hiccup just said I was a chosen one? I couldn't hear the cheering that was for me, I was way too excited. I was going to get to own a dragon! All of that Terrible Terror training had really payed off, hadn't it?


	3. Chapter Three: Day Two

Anton and I let out mighty whoops for each other like two people who had been friends for years. I felt the eyes of Danica on me, but I was too happy to care. I was going to get a dragon! My own dragon! I couldn't believe it, was I dreaming? Nora, who was partial to all of this noise, squealed loudly and whimpered, his nose flaring out. I tried to quiet him, but it didn't help much.

When the four of us quieted down, Anton said loudly, trying to overtop all of the noise. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow. There's a party waiting for all of us!" I grinned at him and nodded. I responded, "See you tomorrow!" And at that, I turned on my heel and marched straight out of gate. I was stopped by a large group of people, everyone basically screaming congratulations. Some people even asked me if they could ride my dragon. I hadn't even gotten my dragon yet and they wanted to RIDE it. I just shook my head and pushed through the crowd. I had to sprint at full speed to my little house to get through the crowds.

I was very surprised to find that my house was already full with Vikings. All of my father's friends, some of my mother's friends, and nearly all of my friends were there. Our house was very noisy, but that was until I walked through the front door made out of oak. Everyone paused to look at me, their faces lightening up upon my arrival. I stopped dead in my tracks when everyone spewed out cheers. I faked a smile and nervously thanked them for coming as I went to join the small group of people waiting for me.

Danica wasn't there, I figured that she was taking her time to get here, but everyone else was. Even some people that I didn't even KNOW were there, but they treated me as if they had known me for years. It was a little overwhelming, I have to say. One of my friends who was new to the town was the first to speak with me. "You're lucky," he teased, lightly poking me in the arm. I grinned and shook my head, "Not really, I mean.. you guys still get your Terrible Terrors." He shrugged his shoulders and looked away, "Yeah, but.. you can't really..RIDE them." He laughed a fake laugh and let another person speak with me.

That night was pretty hectic, I mean the group of people hadn't left until AFTER midnight. We ate lots of food, told stories, played games, opened spur-of-the-moment gifts, thanked everyone, and talked about dragons. I was even talked to by previous dragon owners and learned some tips about how to train your dragon! I was exhausted and I needed to sleep, so my father allowed me to go to bed before everyone left. I couldn't sleep that night due to the excitment and the noise. I was about to get my very own dragon that I could ride. My own dragon. I let my mind wander until the house quieted, the guests left, and I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

I slept like a baby that night and I dreampt about dragons the whole time. In my dreams, the dragon that had chosen me was a Night Fury, exactly like Toothless. And when I was waken up the next morning, the second day of Dragon Day, I actually thought that I would get one.

My father didn't even have to drag me out of bed the next morning, which was before sunrise. Honestly, I was still half asleep as I dragged myself out of bed, put on my best fur clothing, pulled Nora onto my shoulder, and stumbled out of the front door again. But before I stepped outside, my father made me stop. He put a firm hand ontop of my head and smiled down at me. He spoke in a light tone, his Scottish accent showing, "Your mother would be proud." I nodded sleepily and walked out of the door. I hadn't given his words a second thought until I was fully awake, which was when I ran into Danica on my way to the Dragon Arena.

When I saw her, my best friend didn't look happy. Infact, she looked a little bit sad. Her green Terrible Terror didn't look too happy, either. I ran up to her, Nora bouncing up and down on my shoulder as I joined her side. I perked up, no longer feeling exhausted from the night before. "Hiya," I beamed and looked straight at her. Danica was staring at the ground as she walked, kicking at a pebble. "Hi," she said glumly and continued forward. I bit my lip and looked down at the ground, "What's up?" I asked. "Nothing," she grumbled, "You're lucky." I sighed. I had been told that a billion times already.

"I know, I know." I grunted and looked up when the roar of caged dragons became louder and louder. Danica patted her Terrible Terror on the head as she whispered, "I thought I actually had a chance." I didn't know who she was speaking to, me or her little dragon. I thought that it was the Terrible Terror, so I remained silent. We didn't speak until we were standing infront of the main gates of the Dragon Arena.

Danica smiled sadly at me, "Good luck," she said and walked away. I called out to her, "Thanks!" And I turned back to the viking standing infront of the gate. It was the same man. But instead of being bored out of his wits, he looked much happier and proud. "Hello again, Frida." He greeted cheerfully. He pulled the lever again and the gate rumbled open. I stepped through and turned to look at the adult again. He informed, "No Terrible Terrors are to be used in this arena, miss." I looked at Nora and nodded, picking him off of my shoulder. I carefully slipped him through the bars that barred off the gate and handed him to the Viking. I didn't know what happened of him now, seeing that I turned and went to join the other three.

I walked through the dark, sturdy tunnel, only to find that Anton, Christian, and Kristin standing on the other side. I waved at them when they turned to see who was coming. "Hi," I said quietly as I lined up against the other gate that lead to the arena. They greeted me back. "Am I the only one who's nervous?" Kristin laughed nervously, her squeaky voice breaking the silence. Anton looked at her shadow and laughed in return, "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a little nervous, too!" I added in, "Me three." And the quiet Christian joined in too, "Me four." All four of us giggled until we saw Toothless and Hiccup enter the scene.

He surprised us by sneaking through the front gate and stumbling through the tunnel. When he reached us, he rested a hand on Kristin and I's shoulders. He looked at Anton and Christian and then to me and Kristin. He spoke in a nervous tone, almost as if he thought something were to go wrong, "Today is the day your dragon is going to choose you. You don't get to decide what species or color your dragon is going to be, for it will choose YOU. All you guys have to do is stand still and wait for a dragon to come and pick you. You will know your dragon has picked you when it doesn't try and kill you." I could tell that Christian was distressed over this, seeing that he looked very, very worried.

Hiccup noticed this and smiled, "Don't worry, we have several strong Vikings here that will be of assistance for you. If a dragon tries to make a single move, a skilled viking will be there to drag it away. If things go bad, Toothless and I will be there to help, too. I promise you that you won't have a single scratch on you when you step away from this place with your new pet dragon." He paused to look all of us down, "Any questions?" When we all shook our heads on que, he nodded. "Very good, then." He turned around and headed out of the arena. When he found his place near his Night Fury and the village Elder, he announced to everyone.

"Quiet, everyone, quiet down!" He waited for everyone to obey before continuing. "Good. Now, when each dragon is brought out, none of you can make a single noise, for it will set the dragon off. Alright?" When several nodded, Hiccup let out a tired sigh. "Okay, then. Let's begin! Christian, please step into the arena. The rest of you, stay back." I watched as the shrimpy, black haired boy pulled himself through the open gate, closing it behind him, and stood proudly.

Several people cheered loudly as Hiccup ordered the first dragon to be brought out. One muscley, male Viking stepped up to the first door and tossed a sheild at Christian. When the boy nodded, the Viking pulled a lever, which made the door open wide. There was a loud roar as the first dragon stepped out. I could nearly feel the amount of fright that poor little Christian felt. The boy was shaking rapidly, his shield in an iron grasp.

I looked up from Christian and found a Gronckle, a fat one at that. It's massive jaw opened and closed as it's little wings flittered around in the air. It roared angrily again and charged straight at Christian. When the Gronckle was close enough, it landed loudly and opened it's jaws wide. A dark smoke gathered inside of it's mouth as it prepared to fire at the boy. But just before it did, one of the Vikings in the arena saw this and tackled the dragon. Another Viking managed to push the Gronckle back into the cage, where another Viking would be waiting to free it. That dragon was a no-go for little Christian.

When the boy stood tall again, the next dragon was brought out. A thick, green fog covered the arena, making it obvious that the dragon inside of that cage was a Zippleback, and Christian disappeared into it's depths. I watched a couple Vikings step into the fog, just incase something went wrong. After a few short moments, there was a shriek of terror. Hiccup stood up from his seat and looked down into the fog. He looked at Toothless and ran a hand through his brown-orange hair. He muttered, "Get that fog out of there, Toothless," he commanded. The black dragon did as he was told and flew straight into the bars that covered the arena. The Night Fury landed just outside of the fog and flapped it's wings viciously. And soon enough, the fog was cleared.

I kind of expected Christian to be half eaten by now and I was surprised as to what I saw. I saw the Zippleback's heads staring straight at the boy with it's jaws closed. The dragon wasn't trying to kill him off! Hiccup smiled and summoned his dragon back outside. He said, "Looks like the Zippleback has chosen!" Then, the chief's light eyes looked down at the now Zippleback owner. "Well," he said to him, "What is his name?" The boy with black hair looked up at his dragon, his neck craned to stare up at it. "Uhm.." He said nervously, "Viper." He nodded on his own words, liking his dragon's name.

"Okay," Hiccup stated, "One of you," he motioned towards the large Vikings that were watching Viper's every move, "Please escort Christian and Viper safely to the area in which we will be training." The group looked at eachother until one of them stepped out and began talking to Christian about how to make your dragon follow him. I wasn't interested in what Hiccup was saying anymore, I was too busy watching the Viking talk to Christian. I was curious as to how to make your dragon follow you. When the Viking gave Christian half of a raw fish, I watched Christian and Viper slowly make their way off of the Dragon Arena.

My attention was drawn back to Hiccup, who was sitting back down in his seat. "Kristen," he ordered, "Your up!" The girl who was about an inch or two taller than me looked at Anton and I with worried eyes. "Wish me luck," she said darkly as she walked into the arena. "Good luck," the two of us whispered as she stood tall, waiting for the first dragon to be brought out.

The first gate rumbled open, revealing another Gronckle. It's little wings carried its self around the arena as it inspected everyone and everything. It landed infront of the gate that held Anton and I, eyeing at the two of us. We shuddered as it roared straight in our faces and turned around to face Kristin. She held the shield she had been given and shivered as it approached her. It didn't roar, it didn't open its mouth to throw a fireball at her, it just sat a few inches away from her. It watched her every move and snorted loudly, nudging closer and closer. Kristin reached out a free hand and let her finger tips graze the edge of the Gronckle's nose. It snorted again and appeared to grin.

Hiccup nodded and stood up again. "The Gronckle has chosen," he said and looked down at Kristin. "You know the drill," he beamed, "What name is it going to be?" "Chomper," she smiled as she turned towards Hiccup, her face turning a light pink. Did she REALLY like Hiccup? I rolled my eyes. Hiccup cleared his throat nervously and looked at the group of Vikings again, "Again, will someone lead Kristen and Chomper to our designated training area?" And at that, the pair were cleared out of the arena.

Only two remaining. My friend and I looked at eachother through excited eyes. Then, the chief called out. "Anton, please come inside the arena." I gave him a shy thumbs up as he squeezed through the gate. He looked back at me as he walked to the middle of the dusty arena, before he looked up at Hiccup. He chirpped, "I'm ready!" The sixteen year old who was standing near Toothless nodded and motioned for the first gate to be open.

The first gate pulled open, revealing a Nadder. The Nadder ran up to Anton and tried to chomp it's massize jaws at him, so it was dragged away. The second door pulled open, another Zippleback revealed. It tried to shoot the green fog and the electricity at Anton, so that too was pulled away. Then, the third door was opened. Inside was one of the most powerful dragons that Berk had, the Monstrous Nightmare. They often set themselves on fire.

The orange flames danced across the scales of this Monstrous Nightmare as it trotted into the arena. Anton closed his eyes and took a gulp as the dragon neared him, sniffing at him. It let out a roar and opened its jaws, but it didn't set a blast of fire at him. It lowered it's head to stare Anton straight in the eye, remaining perfectly still. The fire that decorated it's body slowly died out, allowing Anton to stroke it's nose with his hand. Hiccup looked at Toothless as he said, "You lucky boy, you've been chosen by a Nightmare! What'll be the name?" "Firroth." Hiccup didn't have to say anything, a Viking had already given a fish to Anton and was leading them out.

"Our final dragon rider, Frida! Please come out from behind that gate." I took a deep breath and stepped into the arena with my eyes closed. I snatched up a shield into both of my hands and stopped walking in the center of the dust. I stood tall and didn't open my eyes until the first door was opened. The first dragon was a Zippleback, but it tried to send a fireball in my direction. Nope. The second was a Monstrous Nightmare, but it tried to catch me on fire, too. Nope. The third door revealed a Gronckle, but it tried to club me with it's tail. Nope.

The final door roared open, revealing a colorful, blue Deadly Nadder. I smiled at it, but not for long. Something was blocking out the sun. The screech of a Night Fury came from above, along with the loud crashing sound of it's firey breath. Someone screamed. Another one hid. Hiccup's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion as he looked behind him. Toothless was still there. Then who was that..?

The Night Fury dove quickly down and opened it's jaws. It let another fireball form in it's mouth, headed straight for the arena. The ball stuck the cage, creating a large opening in the metal. It flew straight into that hole and landed loudly on the ground, it's mouth pulled open in an angry snarl. The Vikings surrounding the dragon arena screamed and shrieked, running away as quickly as their chubby legs could carry them. They were still afraid of the Night Furies. It screeched and it roared, it's eyes locked on me. I screamed as a fireball formed in it's mouth. I held my shield up to protect my body. The Night Fury let the ball loose and it struck my shield with so much force that it shattered to pieces in my grast. Another ball of flame formed into the Night Fury's open jaws, but then I heard the Deadly Nadded let out a hiss.

Being agile on it's feet, it jumped straight infront of me and fired a blast of fire at the Night Fury. The black dragon howled in pain, letting the flame in it's mouth hit the ground. Hiccup jumped down into the arena and took a look at the protective Nadder. "Huh," he said to himself, continuing to stare at the towering dragon that was cornering the Night Fury. The blue and orange Nadder formed another fireball in the pit of it's giant mouth, but the Night Fury had already escaped. It flew up towards the sun again, it's wings outstretched in a speedy getaway.

The Nadder screamed unhappily and let it's long, long nails on it's feet dig into the soft earth. It's wings flapped around as he spit a small fireball at the ground and turned towards the staring Hiccup. It growled as it approached him, it's lips curled, teeth bared. Hiccup put up his hands like you could do to a policeman and backed up slowly. "It's okay," he said to the angry Nadder, but it didn't seem to listen. I was watching these two from the distance and saw that the Nadder was about to strike Hiccup. I walked slowly infront of the trembling sixteen year old with my arms outstretched.

"Come on," I told the Deadly Nadder, "Stop it." And upon my command, the dragon listened to me. It snorted angrily, but it stopped growling and showing it's teeth. Toothless had managed to crawl into the bars of the cage and had plopped himself straight into the arena, a confused expression on his dragon-y face. I dropped my arms to my sides, my eyes locked on the Deadly Nadder's. Hiccup's eyes left the back of my head as he gazed at his own Night Fury.

He joked, "I'm glad you aren't like that." Toothless scampered to his rider's side and wagged his tail like a dog. He looked up at the Nadder with curious eyes, not sure of what to think of this thing. He'd seen a Nadder before, but never this aggresive. He let out a small dragonese bark, a smile falling upon his lips. Hiccup's Night Fury nudged his rider with his massive head, making the human nearly lose his balance.

When Hiccup regained his balance, all four of us stared quietly at the ground. We didn't know what to say. Well, that was until Toothless's rider spoke up. "Well," he coughed, "I've never seen a Deadly Nadder act like that before." I looked up, only to find that the chief staring me straight in the eye. "Should I be proud?" I laughed quietly. My reply was a quick shrug. "I'm not sure," he said. He smacked his lips together, making a little snapping noise. "So," he muttered, "What're you gonna name him?" "Aroth," I grinned. I knew I was going to name my first ride-able dragon Aroth ever since I got Nora. It was a cool name, Aroth. It sounded dragon-ish.


	4. Chapter Four: Slip'n'Slide

Aroth was unmistakably bored. It squawked and howled, allowing it's massive claws to scratch into the dirt. Hiccup saw this and said skeptically, "Come on, I'm sure you want to join the others." When I gave him a brisk nod of the head, the boy turned. His reddish hair flipped over his eye as he bent down to pick up two halves of a fish. With his pale hand, he pushed the hair out of his eyes and turned back to me. He stood up straight and tossed me a slimy, silver fish. I was pretty grossed out, seeing that it's slime was getting all over my hands.

Hiccup informed me that I had to hold the fish out to my Deadly Nadder. He showed me by using the other half of the fish to lure his Night Fury. I watched him hold the fish out a fair distance out from him, his arm outstretched, as he slowly walked backwards. "You coming?" He asked in a bored-out-of-my-mind tone, continuing to stumble backwards. He headed straight towards one of the doors that used to hold a dragon. I turned towards my dragon and copied Hiccup's movements. I reached out the hand that held the fish towards Aroth, who was interested in it's cold, disgusting half.

I began to walk backwards, somewhat surprised to see that my Nadder was following. Inch by inch, I slowly fell into the darkness of the dragon cage. I was afraid that Aroth would tear me to shreds in the darkness, but he didn't. He just continued following me like a good dragon. I grinned in the darkness, my eyes locked on the outline of Aroth's powerful hindlegs.

Eventually, I made it to the end of the dragon cage. There was a gate protecting the other end, but that was left wide open. I walked right through, continuing to walk backwards. Being as clumsy as I am, I ran straight into Hiccup. Toothless, who was eyeing me, let out a low growl. I gave the blue-black dragon a quick glance as I pulled away from Hiccup. He was standing still, fish still in his hands. "Alright," he grunted as if nothing had happened, "You can give the fish to Aroth now." His eyes looked towards Toothless, who's mouth was open to reveal his sharp teeth. He tossed the fish straight into the Night Fury's open mouth.

I watched Toothless devour the half fish in one large chomp before I looked up at my eager Deadly Nadder. It was staring at me through one of it's eyes, it's head turned to one side. He was so close that I could feel the warmth of his scales. I shivered and nervously held the fish out to him. He opened his mouth wide and tore the fish from my grasp. It shook the fish from side to side with it's large head before he swallowed it.

Hiccup put his hands on his hips, observing Aroth. He nodded to himself and turned away once again. He began to walk away from the Dragon Arena as he called, "Your dragon should be able to follow us for the rest of the walk now. Come on, make haste, Frida!" Toothless stared at me through his large, soft eyes before he bounded after his rider.

Aroth was watching the Night Fury run akwardly and looked at me. It snorted excitedly, wanting to follow. I grinned a toothy grin at it and ran after the two who were walking on a marked path. The Nadder managed to follow me like Hiccup had said, even if he did get distracted every so often.

The four of us walked. And walked. And walked some more. Once we were away from the Dragon Arena, we were walking along the fieldy outskirts of the village. The field was rather pretty and hilly, with it's long grass and little flowers that weren't going to be there much longer. And after the field, we were walking on a rough, bricked bridge that lead into the forest. The bridge connected the main island of Berk to a lesser island that was mostly forest. The bridge was grey-ish in color and it looked as if nobody had been walking on it in years. The light _click, click, clicking_ of Toothless and Aroth's nails lightly tapped away as we walked across the bridge.

The bridge, I swear, was about half of a mile. It was quite boring after the first few paces of walking on it, much less interesting than the field near the village. After crossing the bridge, our little group managed to fall into the darkness of the old forest. The forest was pretty too and it's old trees sang in the breeze. Their protective branches blocked out the blue sky and clouds, but nobody seemed to really notice.

"Alright," Hiccup said shyly as he slowed to a stop, "This is the tricky part." He looked over his shoulder to reassure himself that my Deadly Nadder and I were still following. Toothless too stopped, his black tail wagging as his large paw played with a large fern. "There's a lot of rocks and roots that stick out around these parts, so make sure you and your dragon are very careful. There's a steep decline coming up, but you don't need to worry about your Nadder falling."

I nodded. Deadly Nadders were very, very careful on their feet. They wouldn't let themselves fall. I was sure of it. Hiccup continued forward until we reached the drop-off. His feet curled around the edges of the drop and looked at Toothless. "Frida," he snapped. When I looked up, he said in a low tone, "Toothless and I are going to fly to the bottom. It's too steep for a Night Fury." He mounted himself straight onto his dragon's leather saddle and sailed down to the bottom.

I walked up to the edge, Aroth putting himself straight beside me. I looked up at him and sighed, "Ready?" In response, he chirpped an odd, bird-like chirp as he and I began our descent. I could tell that Chomper, Viper, and Firroth had been here, seeing that there were dragon grooves in the mud on the hill. I could tell that a couple of them had fallen too, there were scales and rubbings around everywhere, too. I gulped nervously, letting my pale fingers latch onto smaller trees that were around me.

Aroth and I were doing pretty good until my clumsiness got the better of me. My right foot hit a rock that was hidden among the slippery mud. Being caught off guard, I lost my balance. I was sent tumbling head first, my body rolling about three times. When I stopped tumbling, I managed to end up in one of those animal tracks, which was filled with water and mud. "No!" I squealed as I rushed down the flodded animal tracks, getting my finest fur coat and boots soaked through with water and mud.

My blue and orange Deadly Nadder saw me and thought that this would be a good idea too. It roared with delight as he suddenly stopped making his way down the hill. He bent his knees and sat down on his bottom. The mud underneath him managed to allow him to slide down the rest of the way.

I stopped sliding at the feet of Toothless. His large, black head turned to look at me with his startled, slitted eyes. But when he saw who it was, his eyes stopped looking like a cat's and formed to look more playful. It nudged me with his nose. My face had several dark mud stains on it, my brown hair caked with it, too. Instead of being pissed like a normal person would be, I just laughed. I don't know why, but I just did.

Hiccup turned towards me, too. He chuckled before he found Aroth sliding down the hill. He laughed even harder. Toothless looked between his rider and I, his expression confused. But, he quickly caught on. He laughed a dragon-y laugh, too. Aroth made the needles stick out on his tail when he neared the bottom, slowing him to a stop near us. He jumped to his feet and stomped to our little group. His golden eyes proved that he was happy.

When we all stopped laughing, I stood up. Hiccup was still smiling as he said, "Well. That was interesting." He turned towards the large boulders that were a few feet infront of us. He cleared his throat and let his smile fade. He pointed to the boulders. "Our training grounds are just beyond those rocks. There's a small crack in the rocks towards the middle that you can use after today, but now we have to get our dragons over that hill."

He looked back at me. "Neither Deadly Nadders nor Night Furies are able to climb something like that, not even with their sharp nails. So, are you prepared to fly?" I stared at Hiccup with wide eyes, "What?" "Come on," he sighed in reply and hopped back onto Toothless. He patted the small sliver of saddle behind him as he clipped the elastic that connected him and the saddle. I climbed onto Toothless and took a deep breath, looking at Aroth.

"Alright, Toothless," The chief beamed. And at that, Toothless took off. The ride was only for a few moments, but it was frightening. I kept on feeling like I was going to fall off. Luckily, I didn't have to do it a second time. My Nadder followed me like a puppy. Toothless landed messily and Hiccup unhooked himself from the saddle. He climbed off and helped me off by holding out a hand.

We were inside of the training grounds. I looked around the little enclosement, amazed to find that there was a small lake in the middle of it. Chomper, Viper, Firroth, and all of their owners were playing around with their dragons on the other side. They saw Hiccup and I, waving like idiots. I grinned and waved back at them, running around the small lake to join them.

When I got there, I was out of breath. Anton was staring at my Deadly Nadder, his Monstrous Nightmare close by his side. "Nice dragon," he exclaimed and looked away, back towards his own dragon. He patted it's large, orange nose. "Thanks," I grinned, "You too." Christian was sitting in the corner of the training area with his Zippleback, Viper. He looked rather proud of himself for his dragon, seeing that he was smiling from ear to ear. With a person like Christian, a smile was very uncommon. Upon seeing Hiccup, Kristin was blushing. I laughed at her and playfully picked up a little pebble, flinging it straight at her head. "Wake up, dreamer girl," I teased. She glared at me, her hands on her hips. "I can't help it," she defended, "Hiccup is H-O-T." I shrugged, I suppose he was, but he was the chief of the village. With us being two, unknown village girls, we barely stood a chance.  
Hiccup managed to limp towards our little group, Toothless not too far behind. He had a smile plastered on his face, "Welcome to our training arena," he announced, "You will be training here with me from now on. We will meet here everyday just as the sun rises and we will leave at sundown." He paused. "Because it is not sundown yet, we will begin our training today." Anton, Kristen, and even Christian who had come to join us, and I all smiled. We couldn't wait to begin.


	5. Chapter Five: Armor

Christian's Zippleback flailed it's two heads around wildly as Toothless approached it's small-ish body. It roared and hissed, one of it's mouth's opening wide. Sparks of electricity formed in one of it's jaws, and the thick green fog in the other. Toothless let out a playful little purr as it swatted it's large paws at the small body of the Zippleback. The two-headed dragon didn't like this one bit. It swallowed it's fog and electricity and wailed, waving it's heads back and forth.

Everyone's attention was brought towards the two dragons, seeing that they were making a whole bunch of noise. Christian sighed and walked up to Toothless and Viper. "Alright," he grumbled, "That's enough." He walked away, his head turned to look back at his dragon and patted the side of his leg. Hiccup watched the Zippleback be lead away and cupped his hands over his mouth. "Alright, Toothless. Come on back, buddy." He dropped his gaze down to the four of us. When Toothless returned to Hiccup, our class began.

"For the rest of today, we will be getting our dragons to learn how to follow us on command," Hiccup instructed, ignoring the fact that Toothless was nudging his elbow with his nose. I could feel Anton droop beside me. He pouted, "This place is supposed to be teaching you how to ride a dragon, not how to own a dragon. We've owned a Terrible Terror, we know how to get a dragon to follow you." Hiccup shot him a glare, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration. He said in a harsh tone, "Oh really? Mr. Anton, please step up here and make your Monstrous Nightmare follow you around this whole training arena." The black-haired boy beside me protested, "But-" "Now." "Okay.."

Anton looked behind him and directly at Firroth. He slowly made his way up to our teacher, his feet dragging on the ground. It took him about ten minutes of small steps to reach our instructor. It took him another 10 minutes to get a foot or so away from him. So far so good, Firroth was slowly following him. Hiccup clapped his hands together loudly, "Come on, Mr. Anton! Hurry it up!" His green eyes looked up at the sky, which was slowly fading to a light shade of pink. The sun was beginning to set.

While Firroth and Anton were busy walking slowly around the little lake, Kristin, Christian, and I were all learning how to get our dragons to follow us. It didn't take much persuasion, seeing that Hiccup had given us another slimy fish. I looked up at Aroth, who's nose was flaring and his golden eyes staring at the fish in my hands. I watched Kristen, who was slowly making her Gronckle approach Hiccup and Toothless. I rolled my eyes, I supposed that she wouldn't ever give up on that boy. I shrugged my shoulders and looked back at my Deadly Nadder. He let out a small sigh when he found that he had to follow me around.

We continued making our dragons follow us around until the sky was a light shade of blue. Nightfall. "Alright," Hiccup said quietly, holding the fish out to his Night Fury again. "You can give the well deserved fish to them now." And all at once, Kristen, Christian, and I's dragons devoured the fat, juicey fish in one gulp.

Our gazes were directed towards Anton, who was about halfway around the lake. Firroth was still hot on his tracks, but it looked unnaturally angry. It's eyes were thin slits and it's nose was curled in an angry growl. Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth again and yelled, "Okay, Anton! Come back now." Hiccup's yell set the Monstrous Nightmare off for whatever reason. In a moment, it's jaws opened wide, a fireball forming, and blasted it directly at the chief of Berk.

He had to think fast. "Get down!" Hiccup cried as he let himself collapse to the ground. He winced when the ground struck his fake leg, but he didn't say anything about it. Toothless stared at the bright fireball and looked at our group, which was now laying on the ground. He let out a roar of anger and let his own fireball loose at the oncoming ball of flames. The two collided, making a minor explosion as they made contact. I could hear the Monstrous Nightmare howl, followed by the cry, "No! Firroth!" And then I heard the flapping of wings. It was dark out now and my eyes couldn't adjust. I couldn't see a thing, so I was scared. A few feet away from me, something snarled and landed with a loud crash.

I couldn't see Hiccup, who was pinned to the ground by the Monstrous Nightmare's long claws. It had it's jaws open and there was a fireball forming in it's mouth. Toothless saw this and his eyes narrowed into slits. He let out his Night Fury battle cry as he jumped ontop of the other dragon. The dragon released Hiccup and began to buck like a wild horse. Then, I heard the rapid footsteps of Anton. The boy had grabbed onto the Nightmare's jaws and clamped them together. It flailed for a few moments, unaware of who was grasping him. But when it realized it was the boy whom he had chosen, it stopped flailing. "Bad dragon," Anton roared as he slid off of the dragon's mouth. It stared at him with sad eyes. "Don't do that ever again!"

Hiccup painfully got to his feet and looked at Toothless. "Good, it seems to be listening to you. Your Monstrous Nightmare seems to be easily distracted. Don't let that grow into a habit." He sounded calm on the outside, but he felt afraid of that dragon, now. Anton nodded, "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Hiccup nodded the topic off, his body shaking. "A-alright, let's go back to the village, now. F-follow me." He stumbled off towards the large boulders while we followed. We had a little bit of a climb to get to the exit, but that was alright.

After the climb, we found a large crack that went to the other side. It was a little narrow, but we didn't complain. We left our dragons in the training arena, where we would find them the next day, and slowly walked back to the little village on Berk. We didn't say one word, none of us. Toothless trailed behind us, just incase that Monstrous Nightmare decided to go off on another rampage.

My house was dark when I walked through the front door. I shrugged my shoulders and felt my way up the stairs and into my room, my bare feet clicking against the wooden floors. I found my room and quickly changed out of my formal clothes. I jumped into my warm pajamas and jumped straight into bed. I would've slept like a baby if it weren't for the rude awakening a few hours later.

-

Hiccup ran a hand through his brown-ish orange-ish hair as he finished dropping off Kristen, Christian, Anton, and I. His fake leg, the one he had been given several years ago, ached in every way. It sent shots of pain sending up his spine and body. It made him tremble as he began his way back to the large house that sat on the highest part of the village. Toothless followed him, his tail wagging around happily.

Hiccup looked back at his dragon friend as he began to walk up the hill that held his house. "Hey bud," he smiled gentley as Toothless stared at him through his glowing, green eyes. Hiccup looked back infront of him and up at the stars in the night sky. He stopped walking just to look up at the stars. "What a beautiful night," he told himself softly. Tears formed in his eyes, memories of his father flooding his memory. He ground his teeth together and continued walking.

Hiccup's Night Fury tipped it's head to one side as it ran up the hill and nuzzled his rider's hand. It purred a question, but Hiccup didn't understand what he was trying to say. "I'm alright," Hiccup sniffled and told himself, "I-I'm... alright." Toothless looked at the ground and tried to comprehend what Hiccup was saying. And finally, the two arrived home.

Hiccup let his hair fall over his teary eyes as he walked through the front door, the familiar scent of home wordlessly greeting him. He lit a candle and made it up the stairs with Toothless continuing to follow him into his room. The two collapsed on the bed that was made just for them. The Night Fury allowed Hiccup to curl up beside him. He wrapped his tail around the human's body and layed his large head on the comfortable surface of the bed.

The two slept peacefully like this for several hours. They were happy like this for some reason. I guess they found comfort in eachother.

Hiccup woke up about 4 hours later when he heard the roar and screech of dragons. At first, he thought that he was dreaming because those noises were the exact noises that were heard when you fought with a dragon. When he pinched himself, he didn't wake up. Toothless was still peacefully sleeping beside him as he shook the shiny, black scales. The Night Fury yawned a long yawn and looked bleary eyed at his rider. "C'mon, Toothless!" Hiccup cried and jumped out of bed, throwing on his usual fur coat.

The two ran sleepily out of the house with a large amount of noise, seeing that they were running and bumping into things all around the house. The freezing air of the night waved around them, but it was filled with smoke. Fire. Hiccup scanned the calm village, surprised to see that there were no fires and not one dragon was seen. "Huh," he shrugged and was just about to walk back inside.

But then something stopped him. The sharp cry of another Night Fury rang viciously through the night and the dim shadow of it's outline broke through the quiet stars. Hiccup stared up at the dark sky and when he saw the shadow of the angry beast, his eyes widened from shock. The Night Fury had not come alone. There were several other roaring dragons tagging along behind it, but their identities were blatantly unknown.

Hiccup was mildly surprised to find that the Night Fury was just sitting there, flapping it's wings as it stayed perfectly still. He wasn't paying enough attention to the other dragons, who were now coming quickly towards the village with a large amount of speed. "What the-" Hiccup asked, but he was instantly cut off. There was a bright flash headed towards a small, abandoned building sitting on the edge of the village. And in a few moments, the little building burst into flames. Hiccup looked wildly at Toothless, who's eyes were now terrified slits and his mouth was pulled into a frightened snarl.

The people of the ground weren't taking the beginning of this war very well. Most of them were now waken by the smell of putrid smoke, the battle cries of dragons, and other Viking's screams. Seeing that the two dragons that had accompanied the Night Fury, ten or twelve houses were caught in flames. The screams came from the people locked in side, and needless to say, most of those people were burned to death because they couldn't escape. Almost everyone in the village was running amok now. All hell broke loose for the Vikings.

"Okay, Toothless. We have to make them stop!" Hiccup growled in a furious tone as he climbed onto the back of his dragon. The two took off in a full speed blast as they neared the other Night Fury. Before he knew it, Hiccup could make out the details of the other dragon. The dragon wasn't alone, a human that was wearing shiny, metal armor sat upon it's black scales. The Night Fury's head and body were also lined with the same material as the armor. They'd come prepared.

Hiccup slowed Toothless to a stop just out of sight from the other rider. The boy's brown hair flicked around in the cold breeze as he tried to figure out what was going on. Hiccup jumped when two other dragons entered the scene. These two were riderless and it didn't have armor on. A Monstrous Nightmare and a Zippleback. The large, orange Nightmare didn't look like it was on the guy in the armor's side, either, for it tried to rip the Night Fury to shreds. The pale, green Zippleback joined in on the fun moments later. It's two heads flailed wildly around as it tried to snap at the Night Fury.

It didn't take long for Hiccup to realize that the two fearless, brave dragons were Anton and Christian's. Hiccup made Toothless turn and dive down to the village that was almost in flames now. He watched a group of Vikings sprint as fast as they could away from a large Gronckle. "Alright, Toothless," Hiccup spat quickly, "Let's show these guy's who they're messing with." Hiccup's Night Fury appeared to nod as he neared the Gronckle that too was covered in that armor. "Now!" Hiccup screamed and Toothless let out a ball of fire that was headed straight towards the Gronckle.

Being so close to target, the ugly dragon was knocked to the ground when the fireball struck. The armored man on it's back was less fortunate, for he was sent flying up several yards in the air. When he landed, he landed in a back-breaking heap. His armor cracked. When he didn't jump to his feet, Toothless snorted a snort of satisfaction. He let another fireball loose at the Gronckle, who then shared the same fate as his rider.

"Good," Hiccup breathed as he ran a hand through his brown hair, "Let's get that Night Fury." His dragon looked rather nervous, but he did as told. He sailed back to where the Night Fury and it's rider had been. When he got there, he was very surprised. Now all of the dragons; the Zippleback, the Monstrous Nightmare, the Deadly Nadder, and even the Gronckle; of ours were swarming it. Now instead of staying still, the rider was trying to steer the injured dragon through the group, but they wouldn't leave the two alone.

Toothless opened his jaws when Hiccup told him to. "Get ready," the boy said in a low tone as he leaned down to hide the fact that were was another person in the area. They were quickly making their way behind the Night Fury and it's mob. They waited for the perfect moment to fire. "C'mon," Hiccup yelled to himself, "Move your butt, Gronckle!" Toothless was getting tired. His wings were fatigued and didn't want to continue, his mouth was getting dry from the wind. It wanted to scream at his rider, but this wasn't the time.

Finally, one of the dragons moved. They finally had the perfect shots, a shot that would hit one of the Night Fury's wings. Hiccup raised his voice and shouted to the wind, "NOW!" And Toothless let one more fireball sail through the air. It seemed like forever to the boy with brown hair for the ball to hit. Through his eyes, it was like watching something in slow motion. Closer... closer... closer... closer. And then, the little ball of fire struck with a large impact.

The Night Fury roared with pain and stopped flapping it's wings. It began to fall to the ground. "Yes!" Hiccup cried as he threw his hands up in the air, "We did it!" The unknown rider of the Night Fury was just about to hit the ground, but one of his fellow rider's Nadder caught him at the last moment. The Night Fury wasn't as lucky, though, for it couldn't move it's wings. It crashed into the ground with a loud crash.

The rider of the Night Fury could see Toothless as plain as day now. "Up there," the captian of the three riders grunted to the Nadder rider. The Nadder Rider nodded rapidly and leaned back, making his dragon shoot up through the sky. And before he knew it, Toothless and Hiccup were staring face to metal face. The Nadder rider made his dragon stop flying up. The Night Fury rider leaned to the side just enough to view Hiccup and Toothless. The man behind the armor grunted furiously, "Let this serve as the beginning of war." And at that, the Night Fury rider motioned for the Nadder rider to get out of there.

The Nadder pulled away and was directed out to sea, where the sun was slowly rising. Hiccup watched them until they had disappeared from sight, which he then closed his eyes again. He opened them when he realized how tired Toothless must have been. He then let the dragon land in the village, where he closed his eyes again. He felt dizzy. What did Berk ever do to them?

He had no idea. The only thing that he knew he had to do was get his group of trainees ready. That was all.


	6. Chapter Six: Buckets of Water

Just as the sixteen year old chief was about to step back into his house, a large, male Viking managed to stop him. "Hiccup, sir!" The man said in a rushed tone, obviously out of breath from running so long. When he caught the boy's eye, he stopped sprinting and put his hands down on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. When he had managed to do so, he stood up and gave Hiccup a sad look. Seeing the sadness in the Viking's eyes, Hiccup's heart sunk. He asked in a timid voice, "What's wrong?"

The man blinked away tears, "My family, sir. All were trapped in the fire except for me. What's going on, if I may ask, Hiccup?" The boy with brown hair's eyes narrowed and his nose wrinkled with hatred. He had done this. "I'm sorry for your loss," he shot, his fingers clentched up into balls. He had let an innocent family be killed. The Viking burst down into tears, choking on them, "What is g-going on? What s-should we do?" He collapsed to the ground and continued crying. Hiccup closed his eyes, his mind racing. He honestly didn't know what to do. I mean.. who would?

"A war. We need our best dragon riders, fighters, and blacksmiths gathered for a meeting." Hiccup grumbled and remained silent, allowing time for the family-less Viking to calm himself and gather and prepare everyone for what was about to come. When he had ran off, Hiccup opened up his firey eyes and stormed into his empty house.

Hiccup glared into the darkness of the large house. How could he let this happen? He let out a scream of hatred, causing Toothless, who was now tumbling into the house, to jump. The poor Night Fury didn't hesitate to barrel up the stairs as Hiccup began to let out some of his steam. The boy's gaze locked on an innocent chair, which was unknowingly going to meet it's poor fate; Hiccup.

When the chair's pieces were laying helplessly on the ground, Hiccup felt a little better. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling more drousy than ever. His body and brain managed to allow the exhausted boy's legs to carry him back to the bed on the second story of the house. But, they all failed him when he reached his bed. As soon as Hiccup neared his bed, his lack of sleep caused him to pass out. He collapsed into the bed and everything in his mind went dark. Unconsciousness cradled the chief like a new born baby.

-

The sun rose an hour or two after Hiccup had collapsed into his bed. All of us were startled from the night's happenings. But luckily, none of our houses had been caught in the deadly armored dragon's flames. Our families were lucky too, nobody was dead. Some may have been injured, but not dead. When the sun rose sleepily in the sky, the comforting, morning breeze sailed peacefully through the air. The sky and ocean that surrounded the island of Berk acted like the happenings of the previous night had not occured at all.

I wanted to sleep in like I usually had been doing before I was a 'chosen' one, but I couldn't. I had lessons, just like Kristen, Anton, and Christian. I groaned as the sun poured through my eyelids. When I opened my eyes up, I found the window to my room wide open. I lazily sat up and rubbed my eyes with my fists. My eyes watered slightly, seeing that the scent of smoke was still being carried around in the wind.

I threw my legs out of my bed and onto the ice cold, wooden floors. The icyness of the floor sent a shiver dancing along my spine, but I continued forward. I let the pieces of fabric that were near my window fall into my hands as I pulled them across the bright sun. And after that, I walked up to my wooden dresser. I stared down at the usual Viking attire that filled my entire room.

"Hm," I whispered to myself as I led my fingertips down the familiar, fur coats, hats, and gloves. The fabric tickled them, making me extract my fingers. I pressed my index to my lower lip in thought as I tried to figure out what I should've worn. I eventually decided on a long sleeved, blue-green sweatshirt that my mother had made me a few days before she passed away. This would be covered by a fur coat that every Viking was given. A multicolored ripped skirt that I had put on was tight, but not short. This went along with my favorite pair of brown boots. I wrapped the ends my hair up in the usual, crimson wraps, and decided to add in two black ribbons ontop of the red wraps. I let my uneven, brown bangs fall over my forehead in the usual manor.

I let out a small sigh as I peeked through my covered window. The sun was slowly rising. I hurried out of the front door to my house with a quick farewell to my father. I let my hands run down the front of my skirt to get all of the annoying little wrinkles that bothered me to no end out. While I was doing this, I was running as quickly as possible towards the bridge that lead to the forest.

I was stopped when I saw Christian and Anton walking across from the other end. They were chatting amongst themselves, their attentions drawn towards the ground. I waved my arms in the air to greet them, but only caught Christian's eyes. He waved shyly back and cupped his hands around his pale mouth. "Don't bother!" He yelled through his cupped hands. But, I didn't catch what he had said, he was too far away. "What?" I replied, causing him to repeat himself. "Don't bother!" I caught it this time.

I stopped walking, allowing the two to catch up to me. "Don't bother with what?" I asked Christian as he neared me, his fur boots clicking annoyingly on the unused bricks. He sighed, "Hiccup and Toothless aren't in the training arena." Anton broke rudely into the conversation, "We looked." I massaged the palms of my hands as I spoke, "Ah. Did you run into Kristen while you were there?"

"No," Anton responded, "I think she may be sleeping in." He snickered, but when he realized he was the only one laughing, he stopped. I frowned at him and allowed the two boys to continue. I tagged along only to keep me company.

"So," I said when nobody else dared to say anything, "What're we going to do now?" Christian looked back at me through his black eyes as he said dully, "Check on Hiccup." I grinned, "Oh, really?" When the boys' heads both nodded up and down in reply, I quickened my pace into a run. I ran straight infront of the boys and barreled several yards ahead of them. "C'mon," I remarked, the wind blowing through my thick hair.

The two boys behind me looked at eachother before they began running along after me. When they began to catch up, I tried to quicken my run. And before either of us knew it, we were having a race. We ended up having the shrimpy Christian win, surprisingly. I guess that Anton and I were too tired from the night before. Speaking of the night before, none of us really discussed it. I guess we were kind of nervous about asking eachother how each of our families were.

Before we knew it, we were sliding to a stop at Hiccup's doorsteps. We were surprised yet not surprised when we found Kristen knocking on the wooden door with her knuckle. "Hiccup?" She asked, unaware of our presence, "You in there? You're late for our lessons." It wasn't until she heard our giggles and snickers when she realized we were just behind her. She turned and we all managed to say, "Surprise!"

Our teammate rolled her eyes as she muttered, "What, is it watch-Kristen-try-to-get-Hiccup day or something?" None of us neither nodded our head or shook our head. We just ignored her and stepped up to the door beside her, knocking heavily on the door. No response. We sat out there in the cold for several minutes until the unpatient Anton couldn't take it anymore.

He rudely opened up the unlocked door and stepped right in. The three of us stared at eachother in horror as we watched him heavily make it up the stairs. When he disappeared from sight, we all decided to be dumb and follow him. We caught him in standing in the doorway of Hiccup's room, his eyes locked on Toothless, who was curled around the motionless body of our chief.

"Oh my God!" Kristen cried out when she spotted Hiccup. "He's dead!" Christian's eyes rolled around in his head, "You idiot," he sighed, "He's not dead, he's just sleeping." His tone had quite a bit of a question in it. Anton's eyes rolled, too, as he stepped into the dark room. Toothless's head raised and his eyes opened upon his arrival. It let out a small combination of a growl and a purr as our teammate approached Hiccup.

"Hiccup?" Anton asked when he was beside his bed. He poked Hiccup's thin arm with his fingers, but when he got no reply, he took the boy's shoulders in his hands. He rapidly shook the boy, causing Toothless to snarl and snap at Anton. He let go of Hiccup's unmoving body and backed away from the angry Night Fury, his arms raised in order to comfort the beast. Kristen, Christian, and I all rolled into the room and joined Hiccup's side. We all stared down at his unflinching face as we whispered amongst ourselves.

"Is he dead?" Kristen said unhappily. Christian let two fingers press up against the side of Hiccup's neck. When a soft beating greeted his touch, the boy announced, "Well, he has a pulse.." Anton watched the boy's chest rise and fall with every breath, "And he's breathing.."

We tried to wake the 'sleeping' individual multiple ways. We tried lightly slapping him, we tried screaming in his ear, we tried to pry open his eyelids, and we even tried to pinch him. None of those worked. And then I came up with the idea, "What if we poured water on him?" Anton snickered and Christian's eyes lit up. They both raced out of the room in search for a pail of water. I looked across at Kristen and sighed when she still looked as nervous as ever.

The boys returned with a large bucket a few minutes later. They sputtered with giggles and laughs as they ran up to the still motionless Hiccup. Christian and Anton looked eachother down as they both counted down. "One... two... THREE!" And just like that, they let the bucket of water spill straight down on Hiccup.

That woke him up.


	7. Chapter Seven: Wounds

Hiccup sat straight up as the freezing cold water covered his clothes and body. His eyes were still glazed over from loosing his consciousness a few hours ago. But, the glaze slowly disappeared after several brisk blinks.

When he realized what had happened and who had done it, he was furious. He glared angrily at Anton and Christian, who were now playing Hot-Potato with the bucket. He erupted, "What was that for?" His two male trainees let the bucket hit the ground with a loud crash. This made all of us jump, Toothless included. The startled Night Fury realized that his rider was upset, allowing his eyes to form into frightening slits.

He revealed his pointed teeth by raising his upper lip in a growl. Toothless uncurled himself from the human's body and slunk onto the ground. He lowered himself as he crawled towards the two boys, continuing to growl ferociously. Hiccup saw this coming and raised a hand and narrowed his eyes towards his dragon. "Quiet," he commanded. The room was now devoid of any noise that wasn't our breathing.

The chief lowered his green eyes to the ground and let his face form into a concerned expression. "I'm very disappointed in you two," he said quietly after a long about of silence. He let his hair fall over his eyes. "You aren't going to suffer any consequences this time, but only because we need to start training. Right now." And with that, the chief of Berk let his two legs; real and fake; fall out from under multiple blankets. We all watched him stand up and shift towards the door. Toothless stared angrily at the two boys as he followed behind his rider. We all clumped together, each of our shoulders bumping together. None of us said anything as we tagged behind the two infront of us. We had nothing to say.

It wasn't until we were halfway across the white bridge that we said something. The talkative Anton was the first to say something, as usual. He blurted out loudly enough for Hiccup to hear, "What happened last night?" Kristen's shimmery blue eyes where filled with questions while Christian's black eyes showed no display of emotion at all. I didn't think too much about the subject, seeing that I was too busy watching Hiccup.

The sixteen-year-old froze. He stopped walking and clentched his fists again, his eyes closing. His heart thumped angrily in his chest as he bit the corner of his light lips. He tried not to become angry once again, but he couldn't help it. The night before's events were terrorizing. The beginning of a war. The killing of multiple families. The killing of a Gronckle and a Night Fury, and probably more to come.

Kristen wasn't the first to notice this, but she was the first to bring it up. "Hiccup?" She asked loudly, her face full of worry and hurt, "What's wrong?" The four of us slowed our pace to an eventual stop, seeing that our guide wasn't moving an inch. Hiccup let out a soft grumble of uncomprehendable words that were slurred together. "What?" Anton asked. The chief infront of us looked up at the oncoming forest for a few moments before he began to explain what had happened, what the Night Fury rider had said, and what he had planned.

It took a good few minutes before he was done talking. He allowed us to ask questions, which of course, was brought up by the flirt. Kristen asked, "So you're saying that we aren't going to be learning petty little things that you taught the other chosen ones..?" Hiccup turned to face our little group as he nodded his head up and down. He spoke in reply, "Yes. You will also be taught the ways of fighting by using a dragon. I hope that you will be able to use these things learned in the war we will be going to fight." I was worried. War? This was coming too suddenly, this was only our second day of training!

Nobody else dared to ask questions, so we continued on into the forest. The trunks of trees were covered in a thick mist. We couldn't see the ground. This made Hiccup a bit more than a little jumpy, seeing that someone could pop out from anywhere. But, nobody did.

When we hit the drop off, Anton pointed out a small area where the roots of trees formed to look somewhat like a staircase. And suddenly, the climb down became much easier than the day before's. None of us fell, not one person in our group. When we all made it safely down on the ground below the drop off, our group was grinning from ear to ear. Anton was standing proudly, his chest sticking out. "How's THAT for an easy way down?" We laughed.

After that, we followed Hiccup through the break in the large boulders, entering the training area. I grinned softly as we slid down into the belly of the area. The morning sunlight poured through the walls of the boulders, filling the place with a beautiful light.

Near the other edge of the lake were our dragons, who were all playing around with eachother. The two heads of Viper were batting playfully at the Gronckle, Chomper, who was obviously trying to get both of them at once. The Monstrous Nightmare's laugh rung through the air as it stayed right in Anton's blindspot. My Nadder was obviously distressed over this, seeing that it was wailing unhappily.

"Alright," Hiccup said quietly, "Go ahead and call your dragons." Anton asked in an annoying tone, "Call our dragons? How?" "Just call their name." I looked towards my Deadly Nadder, who was still fussing over his blind spot. I raised my hands up to cup around my mouth as I said loudly, "Aroth! Aroth, come here!" The large headed dragon looked up and across the lake, directly at me. He let out a loud, happy chirp upon my appearance and began to sprint towards me.

Kristen saw this and smiled. "Aww, how cute," she complimented, seeing how my Deadly Nadder was so pleased to see me. She was the next to summon her dragon. She copied my movements and bellowed, "Chomper! Here, boy!" And just like that, her Gronckle flew across and joined her side. "My turn," Christian laughed darkly as he looked at his Zippleback, "Alright, Viper, come!" The two headed dragon roared a greeting as he stumbled around the water's edge.

All of our eyes locked on Anton, who still hadn't called his dragon. The boy gluped loudly and said in a shaky voice, "Okay, Firroth. You can come here, too." And soon, all of our dragons were huddled around us. They playfully nuzzled us with their enlarged noses or they purred their dragon-y pur in our ears. Needless to say, everyone in our group was smiling.  
When Hiccup had turned to retrieve the different saddles for our first flight, Christian noticed something. His Zippleback's delicate body had several wounds marking it. The cuts looked fairly new, but a thin layer of a scab was laying ontop of the break in scales. "Uh," he said quietly, "My dragon is hurt." Kristen and I looked at him and back at our own dragon, examining their bodies for any cuts. Kristen remarked, "Mine is too!" My gaze was locked on several open wounds that wrapped around Aroth's tail. "Mine third." Anton looked at Firroth, his eye catching a wound that was near it's large wing. "Mine four."

But, none of our dragons reacted to the wounds too much. So when Hiccup returned, we didn't say anything when he returned. I stared in wonder at the leather saddles that piled up way above his head, along with the three others in my group. "What are these for?" Christian asked when Hiccup began to the saddles out. In response, the chief grunted, "Flight training."

My heart raced excitedly. Flight training already? I looked up at my Deadly Nadder and grinned. Finally, the thing I had been waiting for the most. When each of the large saddles and each of their straps were organized into four neat piles, Hiccup stood up. He pointed his index finger at Anton as he said, "Anton and Firroth, this is your saddle." With his other hand, he motioned down towards an oddly shaped piece of leather.

Hiccup's finger poined towards Kristen, "Kristen and Chomper, this is your saddle." At his feet layed a round saddle that looked fairly comfortable. "Frida and Aroth, this is your saddle." My gaze was brought down upon a regular looking saddle that looked like something you could ride a horse with. "Christian and Viper, this is your saddle." Another ordinary looking saddle.

And at that, Hiccup began to explain how to keep your equipment undamaged and clean. The whole mini-speech was about fifteen minutes long, but it felt like it was hours. And after that explanation, Hiccup showed us how to put our saddles on correctly. I actually listened to this speech, seeing that it was very important. Before any of us knew it, our dragons were all saddled up and ready to go for a ride.

Hiccup walked up to Kristen and Chomper first, his hand held out to gain the Gronckle's trust. Without much of a fuss, the dragon allowed Hiccup to help his rider onto his back. "Alright," he began when the Gronckle layed calmly on the ground. "All you need to do is step your left foot into that stirrup there, and then stand up on it, swing your right left over the Gronckle, and put your other foot in the stirrup." Kristen took a little while to figure out how to get on Chomper, seeing that she had 'trouble' standing up straight on her left leg. Hiccup had to catch her numerous times.

When she was finally sitting down on the Gronckle's back, Hiccup attached an elastic string to her vest that he had given her, and to a loop in Chomper's saddle. That way she wasn't able to fall off. He told her to keep still and not move a muscle until he said so. After that, Hiccup moved onto Viper and Christian. Getting onto a Zippleback's back isn't too hard, seeing that all you have to do is slide up it's green tail and it's back until you reached the saddle. Christian was a fairly quick learner, so he got it on the first or second try.  
The chief of Berk tied another piece of elastic to Viper's saddle and Christian's vest and again told him not to move a muscle. Firroth and Anton next. Getting onto a Monstrous Nightmare was basically the same as getting onto a Gronckle. Put your right foot through the stirrup, stand up, swing your left leg, sit down, and put your foot in the other stirrup. Anton didn't have a problem like Kristen did, for he got up on the first try.

And then it was Aroth and I's turn. Getting on a Deadly Nadder wasn't easy, seeing that they had only two legs. Hiccup tried to get my Deadly Nadder to bend over on it's knees, but it refused. I ended up having to climb up it's tail and back and sit down like Christian had done.

Hiccup and climbed onto Toothless's back when we were all sitting carefully on our dragons' saddles. And before we knew it, we were all saddled up and ready to go.


	8. Chapter Eight: First Flight

"Okay, riders," Hiccup beamed and leaned forward in Toothless's sturdy saddle. "Go ahead and grab onto the front edge of your saddle." I looked down at Christian, who was now leaning forward exactly like Hiccup was. I bit my lower lip to stop myself from smiling like an idiot as I, too, leaned forward and grabbed onto the front of the staddle.

When everyone was crouched down into this position, Hiccup looked down at his Night Fury and then back up at us. He smiled at each and every one of us as he asked in an excited tone, "Everyone ready?" Anton and Kristen looked and eachother while Christiand and I looked at each other. We nodded enthusiastically. "Okay," Hiccup remarked, "Don't let go while you're up there! Now, take a deep breath." We all inhaled deeply patiently. "Alright.. here... we... GO!"

My eyes, along with everyone else's, watched Toothless and Hiccup shoot straight up in the sky as fast as a blur. My mouth was hanging open in a dumb gape as I felt Aroth look around at the other dragons, who were spreading their wings, preparing themselves to fly. I could hear Kristen slowly urging her large Gronckle into flight. "C'mon," she whispered, "Let's go!" And at that, the laid-back Gronckle outstretched it's little wings and took to the sky.

"WOOHOO!" Anton cried, his hands thrown up in the air, as he watched Kristen slowly blast up into the sky after Hiccup. Christian and I looked at eachother, but not for long. Our stare was broken when his Zippleback flew up into the sky a few moments after Kristen's Gronckle had taken off. I watched a flash of green scales eventually join Berk's chief and Kristen.

Anton was next. His Monstrous Nightmare took a little bit of persuasion, but he was thrown up into the air. The red and orange mass played a sneak attack, seeing that it was ignoring it's rider until the last moment or two. I snickered, poor Anton. He got stuck with the stubborn and rude dragon of the lot. When I looked around, I realized that I was very much alone. Three lone figures were hovering in the air over the training arena, all of their blank gazes on me.

Aroth's oversized head swayed from side to side as it looked for it's companions. It made an unhappy sigh when it too realized that it was the last dragon to sail up in the sky. "Okay, Aroth. Let's go," I said quickly, not liking the fact that my teamates and teacher were waiting for me. My dragon snorted and let it's feet stumble around on the ground. "I said let's GO!" I commanded to the Deadly Nadder, who I knew was listening. After a few minutes of quiet yelling, Aroth was slowly starting to spread his wings. I could hear Hiccup yell down at me, "Hurry it up, Frida!"

His head was pointed up to the sky, his eyes narrowed into a determined glare. He took several deep breaths until his wings were fully extended. I let my hand stroke his lovely blue scales that lined his neck, and that was all it took. Aroth's powerful hindlegs pushed on the ground with great force, his wings flapping wildly. Before either of us knew it, we were up in the air.

We were moving too fast. Aroth was so excited that I was on his back that he increased his speed, sending him and I rocketing towards the grey clouds that lined the area. Everything that we passed by was a blur. Much too fast. The wind that hit my face felt like thousands of icy needles. I was grinning on the outside simply from the thrill of my first flight, but I was scared out of my wits on the inside. I kept on thinking that I would fall off of my dragon's back and plummet towards my death. I hung on tightly to the front of Aroth's saddle and looked down at the ground. I was shocked to find that I could now see the whole island of Berk from where we were in the sky. And that my Deadly Nadder was flying in a perfect ninty degree angle.

I closed my eyes and prayed to back down on the ground. "Stop!" I cried to the wind, but my dragon didn't hear or even listen to me. I knew that I was long past Hiccup, Kristen, Christian, and Anton. I was worried that my dragon wouldn't stop until the atmosphere got too close that it would suck the eyeballs right out of my skull. But, he did a few moments later. We were so close to the ominous, grey clouds that I could've touched them if I let go.

Aroth chirrped out happily and looked back at me. Was it just me, or was Aroth _smiling_? I looked back at him and shrugged nervously. And looked back down at the island of Berk. It looked so little from up here. The people of my group looked even smaller. I let out a scream, "HELP!" I watched the tiny, black figure of Hiccup and Toothless, and the others come barreling up. I could hear their laughter when they drew closer and closer at an alarming pace. I tugged wildly on Aroth's saddle, causing him to stop in the middle of his fast flight to no where. I made him sit there, thousands of feet in the air, until my companions joined up with me.

Hiccup laughed as he slowed Toothless to a stop by my side. "Looks like someone was anxious to fly with their rider, hm?" He looked at Aroth, who growled in reply. Toothless growled the unknown dragon language back, his nose a little bit scrunched up. Hiccup patted his Night Fury's neck when his emerald gaze was brought upon me. "Cudos for hanging onto something that fast." He gave me a quick thumbs up, causing me to blush like an idiot.

Soon, Anton, Kristen, and Christian were surrounding me with their dragons. Anton laughed, "Dude! I totally thought that you were going to fall off! It looked like you were!" I ignored him, seeing that I was still blushing from the sudden contact with the chief of Berk. Hiccup was rubbing the back of his neck, a light, pink blush upon his cheeks, too. I guess we were a little.. embarrassed. I could feel a cold glare that came from obviously Kristen. I ignored this, too.

Christian's words erupted from his mouth like a volcano, "Frida, are you okay? I was scared!" I responded by flicking my head up and down in a quick nod because I didn't feel like saying something verbally. Christian joked, "Man, your Nadder would be the best dragon racer ever known!"

Kristen said coldly back to the quiet boy, "No." All of our stared landed upon her, who had her arms crossed over her chest like a child who was just about to throw a nasty tantrum. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were furious and were directed on me. She didn't like that Hiccup's attention was brought towards another female. Typical female nature. Sometimes I'm glad that I'm not your average girl like she was. Sometimes I wondered if she was even part Viking.

"Well," Hiccup stuttered nervously through the akward silence, "Shall we continue our ride?" "YEAH!" Anton said, pumping a fist into the air. Christian and I simply nodded our heads. The envious Kristen refused to do anything other than glare at me, I swear! "Alright," The chief laughed and began to slowly direct Toothless into a nice, easy flight pattern. I was fascinated with Toothless's fake tail fin and the way it was controlled. I was staring at it until Aroth lunged, breaking my thoughts, and flew peacefully behind Christian's Viper.


	9. Chapter Nine: Drop Training

When things started to settle down, Hiccup's grasp tightened on the edge of Toothless's saddle as he allowed himself to let one hand stop hanging onto the leather. His free hand dropped limply at his side, the fingertips of that hand lightly grazing the area where his right leg ended and a fake leg was placed. He winced out of shock and a small amount of pain when he realized what he was touching. He removed his hand from his side and let it rest on the rough surface of his saddle.

Hiccup turned his waist so that his torso faced the four of us. He looked down at each of our dragons and back up at their riders before he smiled a fake smile. "How's everyone doing back there?" He asked casually before letting his free hand rub Toothless's rough, scaley skin. We all mumbled the boring response of "Fine." This caused the chief to frown. "Well, what? Am I boring you to death."

"Quite the opposite," Christian blurted quizzically, his dark eyes were locked upon the beautiful outline of Berk. Although we were sailing just below the darkness of the gray clouds, Berk looked as beautiful as ever. We were all staring at it through dreamy eyes, kind of like the way Kristen stares at our teacher.

Hiccup looked briefly at it too, before he turned back to look infront of him. He took a deep breath and allowed us to enjoy the moment before he spoke a little while later. "Hey," he said quietly, "Ready to get to the real action?" Anton and I looked up from the island. "Real fun?" Anton questioned, his grip loosening on Firroth's saddle. Our teacher grinned, "Yes. It's quite a challenge and I'm surprised that I'm actually going to be teaching all of you this on the first flight. But, it will be vital for the war we will be fighting and all of you need to get used to it before then. So, let us begin." He paused to take a very deep breath. Oh crap. What was he going to teaching us? He opened his mouth but before he could speak, Christian asked something.

"What are we going to learn?" Hiccup took another deep breath, "Oh, just another step in dragon flight." He paused, allowing our ears to fill with silence before he spoke again. "Okay. All of you, listen up. I need you to watch and listen to me." He turned to face us, his face brightening with excitement. "If you don't, let me welcome you to the first class ticket to death." I shuddered with fear. What if something went wrong? "I need all of you to stand up a little bit in your stirrups. Just enough to lift your behind off of the leather." He looked at each of us with cheerful eyes while we began to pick ourselved off of our saddles. The elastic that connected the saddle to each of our vests stretched out, letting out small squeaks of protest.

Before we knew it, all of us were standing just an inch or so above our saddles. Hiccup nodded to himself and instructed, "You may sit back down, now. You don't need to do this for the whole ride, just do it when you hit the halfway mark of the way down. After you're done doing this, go ahead and grab onto the edge of the leather for your dear life. Got it? Good. Now, this is what we will be doing. We're going to be going down one at a time and we will stop just before our next training area, the rocks. Now please, watch me and where I am headed."

Hiccup closed his emerald eyes before he and Toothless flew a few feet ahead of our paused group. "Okay, Toothless," he whispered, his fake leg steering the commands of his Night Fury's red tail fin. The black dragon dove straight down out of no where. It's wings were now tucked in, allowing the dragon to slice through the air. Before long, the dragon had become a blur. None of our eyes could spot Hiccup or even the distant face of his dragon.

Just as all of us thought that Toothless would send Hiccup shooting into the water, which was a few yards away now, the Night Fury let it's wings unfold and spread around it's body. He let out a Night Fury cry of happiness as the two were immediately slowed just before they struck the ocean's watery surface. We all watched Toothless be slowed to a stop a few moments after they stopped their drop. The two sat on the outside of an ominous cave thing that looked pretty frightening.

We saw the outline of Hiccup's tiny body wave wildly at us, making it known that he wanted to next person to go. Christian's Zippleback was first in line. He turned to look back at us, his limp, black hair flailing around his thin face. Christian's pale lips formed into a cat-like smile as he said darkly, "Wish me luck." I nodded and was the only one to say, "Good luck!" Before he went down with his Zippleback.

My heart raced for Christian as I watched the strange pair slice down through the sky in a way that made them look like they were defying gravity. I closed my eyes as the oceanic water quickly neared Viper. luckily, the two-headed dragon saw this coming and spread out it's wings to stop it from hitting the water. The dragon was steered carefully, if not slowly, back towards the waiting Hiccup.

When the chief waved his arms over his head again, I took a deep breath. There was no longer anyone infront of me, just the pale gray clouds. My turn. I gripped onto Aroth's saddle as I allowed him to lunge forward again. I watched his large, rainbow-ish wings flap excitedly until I slowed him to a stop by tugging on the saddle. I looked down at the water below my feet and let a hand slap over my mouth to stop a scream I felt coming.

I removed my hand and let it brush the rough blue scales of my Deadly Nadder. "Let's go," I whispered as I leaned down and forward, forcing my dragon to dive down. The icy wind of September struck my face like the same, icy needles that I felt on my way up. I knew that I had let out several shrieks when I started to cough wildly. My eyes started to get teary from the amount of air striking them. I had to close my eyes to stop them from watering. And to stop them from seeing the oncoming water.

Aroth saw the ocean coming and let his wings out again. We slowed to a stop just a few centimeters before crashing into the depths of the water. "Alright!" I coughed as my dragon's powerful wings began to quickly lead us up to Hiccup and Christian. The two boys' cheeks were puffed as they tried not to laugh in my prescence. I rolled my eyes and snorted, even though I was smiling along with them.

I watched as Chomper and Kristen make their way down to us, too. Kristen let several screams out too, making the two people next to me burst out in laughing. When she joined us, her face looked pale and quiet starstruck, seeing that she had just dropped thousands of feet. That made me wonder if I was pale, too. But when Firroth and Anton came down, I couldn't help but be distracted from my thoughts.

Now, all of us were back towards the open mouth of the dark cave. We were formed in a semi-circle, all of our dragons and ourselved facing towards each other. We were so close to each other that I could hear Anton's stomach growl in hunger. And then I could hear Hiccup's stomach reply by growling, too. We all laughed. We were tired and hungry, so we were kind of fighting hysterics at the moment.

Christian allowed his black hair to fall over his eyes as he asked out of the blue, "Can we go eat lunch now? I'm hungry." I nodded, I guess I was pretty hungry, too. What time was it? I looked around, only to mentally punch myself for thinking that there was a time teller somewhere out in the middle of no where.

Hiccup's mind raced as he began to ponder the idea of what time it should've been. "How long do you think it's been since we left?" He thought out loud to himself. Anton replied, "Several hours?" "Already?" I asked, peering at the red-headed boy that rode the evil Monstrous Nightmare. "Probably," Hiccup said aloud as he let out a small sigh.

"Well, shall we head back to grab something to eat?" Our teacher asked, his sparkly eyes scanning all of our faces. When Christan and Kristen nodded wildly, Hiccup bobbed his head up and down. "Okay," he whispered as he steered Toothless away from the floating semi-circle. "Follow me," He cried as Toothless began to quickly fly towards Berk. We made our dragons barrel after our teacher just like a pack of starving wolves.


	10. Chapter Ten: Hungry, Hungry Vikings

It took the five of us barely ten minutes by dragon flight to end up at the main dining hall of Berk's cute little village. I couldn't help but smile when I realized that it probably would've taken us thirty or so minutes by foot. I was also smiling due to the fact that Hiccup actually allowed us to land our dragons in the village. The village! Public!

My eyes were glued to the tall mountains, their overly tall tips now hidden by the huge clouds that were blocking out the sun. The relaxing, musky smell of rain and dampened earth filled everyone's nostrils. Hiccup saw and smelt this coming and took a deep breath as he leaned forward, letting Toothless to quicken it's flight. He said only loud enough for all of us to hear, "We've got to hurry, a storm is brewing." I watched Anton and Christian slowly lean forward in their saddles too. I did this too, and felt the brush of cool air rush up against my face. I inhaled and watched as the village came closer and closer at a quick pace. My dull eyes searched for my house that my father would most likely be in, but I couldn't spot it from here. Other houses that were of many sizes blocked out the view of it, anyways.

When we neared the village, Hiccup landed Toothless several drawn out yards. He slid his frail body off of the dragon's saddle, his feet landing firmly on the ground with a soft thump He brushed the wrinkles out of his light green sleeves with the back of his hand while all of us were struggling to land our own dragons.

Aroth let out several distraught cries as I leaned from right to left, trying to find the right place to land. I looked stressfully down at Hiccup, who was busy at work trying to perfect his clothes. Anton looked at all of us with angered eyes, realizing that we were none other than stuck. "Hey!" He hissed ferociously down at Hiccup, casuing him to quit messing with his clothes and look up at us. He stopped leaning up against Toothless's body and stood up properly.

"Oh," he chuckled nervously while rubbing the back of his neck with one of his hands, "Sorry. Just suspected that you knew how to land that's all." Christian rolled his deep, black eyes and batted his thin eyelashes. Hiccup quit rubbing the back of his neck and said in a quiet voice, "To start, stop shifting in all of your saddles. That only makes the dragon stressed with multiple commands." We stopped moving and sat up, our backs cracking in the process. "Okay. Now, just let yourself push down on the saddle. That should make them land."

I looked to my right hand side and watched Kristen let her hands press softly down on the circular saddle. The Gronckle's huge nostrils flared as it let it's wings stop flapping around like a Hummingbird's. Down it went, a loud thunk running into our ears as it's heavy body struck the ground. Chomper let his legs fall, letting them splay out around him. His large eyes twinkled happily, his tounge hanging out of the side of his massive mouth.

Kristen slid off of Chomper's back and gave him a quick pat on the nose as he looked up at the bellies of our dragons. She managed to sneak up beside Hiccup using her stealth, her body sitting lightly beside our teachers. When he noticed this, the chief looked at my fellow rider and shuddered upon seeing her batting eyelashes.

She let her lips stick out a little bit as she said in a flirty kind of tone, "Pfft. Beginners." She winked one of her amber eyes as she looked up at the sky again. She ignored Hiccup's weirded out face. The Night Fury rider had his nose wrinkled a little bit, seeing that he was being hit on. Who was she to make fun of us? She was a beginner, just like us. Hiccup found himself slowly squeezing away from the girl who couldn't stop showing off those amber eyes of hers.

After he had escaped the flirty mess of Kristen, Anton, Christian, and I had all landed. We quietly hopped off of the backs of our dragons with a small amount of trouble. I brushed my uneven brown bangs out of my eyes and let out a small sigh as Hiccup began to slowly lead us back to the main hall. Lunch time.

The aroma of freshly roasted chicken breasts and legs waved around the large building that we stepped into. There were several other Vikings crouded into the room, their mouths and cheeks filled with the delicious meat. My mouth watered slightly as all of us hurried towards the large fire that was slowly cooking the food. Hiccup was greeted by several of the Vikings that were gathered in the room, but we could all tell that he was too busy thinking about food to reply the formal way.

We all snagged our claims on our tasty food before we retreated towards two empty tables that sat near the large fire. I sat down at the second table, the one that the other's hadn't sat at. I hadn't realized that Hiccup hadn't sat at the first table, let alone sit down at the second table. I looked up to see who was joining me and jumped a little bit in the wooden chair I was sitting at. I looked away, even if I could still feel the vastness of Hiccup's eyes locked on me.

He picked up a chicken leg by it's oversized bone and stared at it's brown, crispy surface for several quiet moments. I decided not to watch him take a large bite out of it, the chicken's roasted juices dribbling down the boy's chin. Hiccup wiped away the juices and let out a small sigh of disappointment due to lack of conversation. His eyes trailed over towards the other table, which was nearly exploding with laughter and loud voices.

He frowned at the group and looked back at the table he and I were sitting at. His eyes were a little bit glazed over after a few minutes of staring, deep in thought. He was staring directly at the plate nearly full with food that I hadn't touched since he joined me at my table. He took another large bite of his chicken leg, the delicate skin crunching under his teeth. My stomach growled with hunger, but I didn't want to eat infront of the chief. It'd be embarassing.

Hiccup asked when his eyes weren't glazed over anymore. "Why aren't you eating your food?" I looked up at him with hungry eyes, refusing to look at the delicious food he had in his hand. I shrugged my shoulders and looked back down at my feet, kicking quietly at the fur of my boots. But before long, I couldn't take it anymore. I looked up at my plate and picked up a piece of chicken. I stared lovingly at it and shoved it into my open mouth. My tastebuds sprung to life as I let the chicken sit in the middle of my tounge.

I sighed happily, the tasty taste surrounding my mouth. I put more chicken in my mouth. And more. And more. And more. Until my plate was nearly empty. I patted my stomach happily, my eyes drawn towards the other table. They had already finished their plates. This fast? I rolled my eyes. Vikings. They could eat a whole cow in thirty minutes and still have room for more!

**Author's Note: :c Sorry, not a very good or long chapter. I'm tired out of my wits, only got 3 or so hours of sleep last night, and I've lost my inspiration for writing (Don't worry, it always comes back in a day or two. c:)**


	11. Chapter Eleven: War Discussions

Hiccup left to go chat to with a large amount of people that had been gathered in order to prepare for the upcoming war. He picked his plate up into one hand as he gracefully stood up. He was about to turn and leave when he saw the plate I was leaving be for a little while. He looked nervously between me and the plate as he stuttered, "A-are you finished with that..?" I looked up and gave the chief a quick nod before my gaze was returned towards the loud table.

The boy nodded his head, his somewhat long, silky hair bouncing around his face. He picked up my plate and stacked it neatly ontop of his own. The plates rattled as they came in contact and were bounced around as Hiccup hobbled towards a table that was used as a dirty plate pile. He stared up at the giant stacks of white plates, standing up on the tips of his toes as he tried to reach for the top of one of the piles. He closed his eyes while doing so. But, he just couldn't reach. He opened his eyes and shoved the two plates on the edge of the table, forming their own small pile.

He walked calmly in between the two tables of ours, both of his hands holding him up in an arc. When everyone's attention was brought towards him, he cleared his throat in a soft growl, "I will be leaving for a moment or two. I'll come back, just stay here until I do." It was a short, one-sided conversation, seeing that Hiccup turned directly on his heel when as soon as he had finished talking.

Chief of Berk's village took in a sharp breath as he left us behind. He was kind of worried, leaving us alone. He hoped more than anything that we wouldn't run off like a bunch of unruly children, or perhaps a bunch of wild wolves. He knew well in his heart that Christian and I couldn't possibly do anything to harm his village, but then there was Anton and Kristen. Those odd pair made him shudder in his warm, fur boots. What they could do while he was gone was way over his head. But, he couldn't miss this meeting. Not with the whole war thing coming in just a couple of short days. He needed to prepare.

The boy took a sharp left turn out of the wooden dining building, his lips forming a sad frown when the beautiful smell of roasting chicken disappeared into the windy breeze. He took a deep breath of the outside oxygen and stopped walking to look around him. He didn't find anything out of place, out of the ordinary, or anything strange going on. Infact, it looked quite peaceful to him. He smiled, Anton and Kristen hadn't burned the whole village down yet. Yet. Hiccup continued his walk, but this time he hurried up his pace. He knew that if the chief was late to his own meeting, he would be skinned alive.

Hiccup's breath caught short after a while of speed walking. He glanced around the passing numerous buildings, hoping to find something to look at inbetween their structures. But nothing stirred. The only thing that moved was the wind blowing violently through the trees and grass. The wind blew past Hiccup's open ears, roaring loudly. The boy's emerald eyes darted up to the sky, trying to find the source of why the wind was so heavy.

The sky was clouded over by green clouds. Green? They were gray several minutes before. He blinked his eyes rapidly, but the clouds remained the same color. White lightning illuminated those disgusting looking clouds and the ground below. Thunder boomed in the distance a few moments later, causing Hiccup's ears to rumble and grumble. The boy bit his lip and changed his pace into a run when he realized that the rain would be coming quite soon.

Another lightning bolt struck beautifully in the sky for a moment before it disappeared. It's best friend, thunder, rolled throughout Berk's village, making several flimsy buildings shudder in their foundations. Hiccup gasped for air as he ran up and down the narrow streets of his village. "Where is the meeting?" He spat in between his ragged, uneven breath. He looked uselessly up at the sky and saw that the rain was growing closer and closer by the minute.

The low voice of a male Viking called out, "You coming, Hiccup?" Upon hearing his name being called, the boy looked down from the sky and at the man who was standing in the bright doorway of a short and fat building. Hiccup stood up properly and approached the Viking. "Yes, of course," Hiccup muttered under his breath as he flicked his hair over his green eyes.

There were several people sitting around a huge, freshly polished table. Some of them were having hushed conversations while others weren't talking at all. Most of the women in the group were twitching and there were sadness in each of their eyes. However, when Hiccup walked into the room everybody quit what they were doing. Everyone looked surprisingly happy to see him.

He smiled nervously, giving a quick little wave. "Hi.." He stuttered, "S-sorry I'm late." A soft grumble rose into the air as Hiccup found himself a seat at the end of the vast table. His shadow flicked and flittered about in the fire's light, but nobody really seemed to notice. Hiccup let his elbows rest on the top of the shiny table, his fingers locked together in a tight grasp.

Nobody spoke a single word until the crackle of thunder made the windows rattle rapidly in their sills. All hell broke loose. People were screaming and yelling out of fear at Hiccup, who wanted to disappear right then and there. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. He yelled, "QUIET!" And everyone returned to their silent stage.

Hiccup opened up his green eyes once again, narrowed and glaring at every single person who surrounded the table. "We all need to stop this fighting if we want to win this war." He hissed, "I don't know about the lot of you, but dying in the flames of an enemy's dragon does not sound like a good idea. At all." A soft grumble of combined voices rung through the air as he continued, "If this doesn't sound good to you, too, you need to listen up to me." He paused to look around the people around him. When they all had their eyes on him, he took a deep breath. "This is what I've been thinking.."

And while Hiccup and a large amount of adult Vikings were discussing their war plans, Christian, Anton, Kristen, and I were all formulating a plan that would probably change our fifteen year old lives forever.


	12. Chapter Twelve: Ruffnut and Tuffnut

"Will it work?" A dark haired Viking with a beard asked flatly. His old eyes were filled with concern and his fist was kept firmly on the table infront of him in a neat ball. Everyone around him looked nervous or afraid, but only due to the fact that people whom they were going to go up against once had a Night Fury. And by the sounds of Hiccup's story, they most likely had other powerful, hard to beat dragons. Not to mention the weapons those armored men were going to bring.

Hiccup leaned back in his wooden chair, his hand brought over to shade his eyes from the illuminating fire that flickered in the center of the room. He rubbed the edge of his pale forehead gingerly with his free hand, his head pounding with stress. These Vikings he had gathered.. they only had two or so days to prepare themselves. Not to mention us, who had just started learning about dragon flight one day earlier. He needed a MIRACLE to win this one.

The chief of Berk said in a muffled tone, "It should." He removed his hand from covering up his beautiful eyes and stared directly at the man who had spoken to him. "I hope," he mumbled through grit teeth as he turned his head away from the table. Another man shot, "What do you mean 'You hope'? We've a war to fight, yet you can't make up your mind if this plan is going to work or not?" The man's Scottish accent was rather strong, slurring parts of his words together like a drunk.

Hiccup let his hair fall over his emerald eyes as the man continued to go through the insult book. "If you don't get it togther, Hiccup, Berk should have never even existed. We're going to get obliterated! Burnt to a crips! Eaten! Bleed to death! Does that sound nice, Hiccup? Does a painful death sound good to you? I don't know about you, but I want to live!" The poor boy couldn't handle it anymore. "So get it together or so help me I'll-" The rude viking was cut off by Hiccup's wrath.

"Shut up!" He roared harshly, "I know what I'm doing, you idiot!" The hair that fell over Hiccup's eyes were suddenly pushed away by his slender hands. What lay underneath his bangs was the nastiest glare in the entire world. The boy's eyes were narrowed, almost to look like a dragon-ish scowl, his nose was wrinkled in disgust, and his lips were pressed together in a snarl. The man who had been complaining about Hiccup's lack of good plans slunk into the pit of his seat, his cheeks lighting up a faint red.

Astrid, who had been summoned to this meeting, sat in the darkness covered portion of the table. Her bare arms were crossed over her chest and her large eyes (Or should I say eye? Her hair always covered that ONE eye) were lost in thought. In her mind, she was flying around the island of Berk with her lovely female Deadly Nadder and her lovely boyfriend, Snotlout. Her head flicked to one side every so often to keep that blonde hair out of her eyes, but it just kept on falling on down.

She wasn't quite listening to the topic Hiccup was discussing at the moment, but then again, she didn't really EVER listen to Hiccup. Not since he started to lose interest in her when his father died from a dragon rampage several years ago. But she didn't really need to listen to Hiccup, she had the slick Snotlout. Sure, he could be touchy-feely and a bit pushy at times, but atleast HE paid attention to her. Besides, that little twit that called himself the chief of Berk was sixteen. Merely a child. Now Astrid, she was seventeen. All grown up.

Astrid was sneering in her thoughts. Her lips were twisted into an akward, cat-like smile, her eyes glued straight infront of her. It wasn't until the twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, began to fight. I swear, those two can't stop fighting for 10 seconds! Tuffnut started it, his boney fingers jabbing his sister's sides rapidly. The female twin had been staring lovingly at Hiccup, the boy she still had a major crush on, even though 5 years had past when she tried to make her first move.

Upon feeling her brother's constant jabbings, Ruffnut turned. Her eyes were firey with rage as she yelled in a quiet tone, "Quit it!" Tuffnut simply threw back his head and laughed a somewhat evil laugh, "Yeah, right!" He poked her harder. The girl threw her hands at her sibling, her grasp clamping down on his poking hand. Her grasp was so tight that Tuffnut howled loudly in pain, interupting the whole meeting. "Hah!" Ruffnut cried and only increased the pressure she put on his hand. "Hahhahha!" Tuffnut replied as he swung his free hand straight towards his sister's shoulder. Before she could dodge his blow, his hand locked tightly onto her shoulder.

Using his powerful muscles that Tuffnut had gotten over the few years, the boy pulled his sister to her nimble feet and pushed her down towards the table. Her head hit the table with a loud crash while the protection of her iron helmet slowly rolled off of her head. "HAH!" He screamed in triumph straight into his sister's smirking face, only to find that he was the one to be losing.

Ruffnut's sore shoulder shot out and stretched her arms as she grasped the rolling helmet with the palm of her hands. She let her fingers stroke the smooth surface of the helmet as she prepared her other arm to do it's magic. Her other arm shot out and sliced through the air, hitting her brother's arm with a sharp cracking noise. As he recoiled in pain, Ruffnut took this time to free herself from his grip. She slid out from the table without him noticing, slinking up behind him. Fishlegs, who was sitting next to Astrid, looked nervously at the two of them. His chubby little fingers were fiddling around as his eyes were darting from Hiccup to the twins. "H-hey, m-maybe we s-should q-quit f-f-fighting now.." But the two blatantly ignored the obese speaker.

Before he realized who was standing behind him, Ruffnut pushed her brother's back straight towards the wooden table. The boy lost his balance, sending him crashing broad chest-first. The glasses of water rattled violently as the boy landed, the water inside of them splashing about on the table. "Heh," Ruffnut coughed under her shaking breath. She allowed herself to step her fuzzy, brown boots onto the table. Before anyone knew it, the girl was standing on the top of the table.

Ruffnut raised her hands above her head, an evil grin marking her lips. She stepped one of her boots onto the back of her brother. She let out an animal-ish whoop from the base of her swirling lungs. But then she realized that her brother and herself were out of the shadows. Everyone could see her. Her eyes darted hastily towards Hiccup, who was glaring his nasty glare straight at her and her brother. "I'm soooo dead," she thought as she waved nervously towards her angered crush.  
**Author's Note: Yes, I HAVE paired Astrid with Snotlout, I love that couple. Don't like it? Cry me a river, build a bridge, and GET OVER IT. Deal with it.**


	13. Chapter Thirteen: Captured

Hiccup closed his nearly slitted eyes in frustration. Couldn't ANYONE take this matter seriously? It didn't seem like that to him. He rubbed his forehead with a free hand as the twins managed to slide off of the tall, wooden table. He opened up one eye and his gaze shifted towards an open window. He could see that the storm out of that window, it's wild wind and bizarre lightning flashing wildly about. The chief opened up both of his eyes now and stood up with a bitter look on his face. He placed his hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward towards every adult Viking that sat around him.

He frowned at them and didn't blink for several moments until someone let out a gruff cough. He blinked once, batting away the glaze that covered his green eyes, and sighed. He spoke in a thick tone, "I highly suggest each of you whom have rideable dragons prepare them at once. I suggest each of you who are blacksmiths to make whatever type of weapon or armor to begin work at once. Not sleeping is not an option, I need all of you to be working every minute that you aren't eating. We're going to be playing this game their way. For the rest of you, prepare yourselves for this war."

Hiccup stopped leaning against the sturdy table and removed his hands. He sucked in a deep breath and turned so that he faced his large seat. He pushed the chair away and stepped straight out into the wicked storm. He paused as the door behind him slammed shut and allowed thunder to ring loudly in his ears. His green eyes were locked on the ugly green sky and it's flashes of lightening. The vicious wind whipped his brown hair around his face and eyes, making him partially blind.

Luckily, the chief was standing underneath an overhanging roof. So, he wasn't quite drenched yet. He looked down at his fancy-ish fur coat and boots and sighed. He didn't want to get them wet. Hiccup glanced behind him to make sure that nobody was watching him as he began to remove his fur coat. When the coat was off, the icy wind struck his exposed arms. He shivered as he bent down and took off his boots. His cold bare feet squished in the wet mud, making strange splurchy noises. He held his boots and coat in his arms and looked up at the sky again. Hiccup let out a loud, high-pitched whistle that was nearly louder than the thunderous booms.

At first, there was no reply. The wind continued blowing, the thunder continued booming, and the lightening continued flashing wildly, without any interruptions. Hiccup's heart beat rapidly in his chest, fearing that Toothless may have gotten stuck in the storm or had been blown away, or even worse. Taken by the armored dragon riders. But then, the cry of his Night Fury pierced through the storm. The dragon rider smiled when he heard the cry of happiness. It took a little of time for Toothless to find his rider.

Then, the outline of Toothless came into view. He wasn't flying, but barreling towards the innocent rider. Hiccup raised his arms up to stop his oncoming dragon, his face somewhat surprised. "No, Toothless!" He laughed when his dragon managed to pin him down to the muddy ground. "Look what you did!" Toothless's green eyes peered down at his rider's muddy arms and clothes. The Night Fury snorted and crawled off of Hiccup, sitting down on his rump a few feet away.  
The chief of Berk stood up and sighed when he realized how Toothless should have been flying. He picked up the fur he had dropped and stepped out into the cold rain. He examined and walked behind his patient dragon, his shiny, emerald eyes locked on the Night Fury's tail. He knelt down near the watery ground and poked towards the fake, red fin with the white skull on it. Nothing appeared to be wrong with it.

Hiccup stood up and hobbled around Toothless's scaley body, his gaze staring upon the array of leather straps that lead up to the saddle. He tugged at the saddle and stirrups, but nothing seemed to be out of place. The chief sighed and looked down at his bent-over dragon. He raised his leg when he shoved his foot into the saddle. He let his fake leg fall into the other stirrup as he made it click into place. He looked down at the drenched paper of commands and looked down at his right leg. He bent it backwards and made a quick clicking noise before Toothless took off just above the roofs of the village.

Toothless's wings were fully outstretched into a full-speed glide, making the buildings turn into little blurs. Hiccup sat up straight and stared down at the blurred ground in horror when he realized that he had long passed the mess hall. "Hey, Toothless..?" He asked in a worried tone as he looked down at his reptile friend. "I think we missed our-" He was interrupted by his Night Fury's scream. Toothless tossed his head around in anger, causing his flight path to be messed up.

Hiccup was nearly tossed off of his dragon when Toothless slowly began to stop flailing his head. He pressed a slender hand on the Night Fury's neck and stared at the back of his head, "What is wrong with you today?" When he obviously didn't receive a reply, Hiccup's green eyes were brought in front of him. He gasped at what he saw; the mouth of an unknown cave in a tall mountain. He tugged at Toothless's saddle, but the dragon ignored him. "STOP! STOP IT!" He cried into the wind.

But it was too late. Soon enough, the darkness of the cave engulfed Hiccup. He was thrown off of his dragon's saddle, his stringy elastic strip snapping in half, and skidded across the wet floor. Hiccup felt around blindly, unsure of where he was. Not one single light source lit the room. Not even the cave entrance, that felt like miles away from where he was now.

He jumped when a dark laughter broke through the cave's echoey walls. "Hello again, Hiccup." The boy's nose wrinkled into a glare when he realized who was speaking. The armored Night Fury rider.


	14. Chapter Fourteen: Decisions, Decisions

I couldn't see anything, let alone remember much of what happened after eating that delicious, tender chicken in the mess hall. My eyes were squinted in frustration as I tried to remember. Was Hiccup there when I lost my consciousness? No, he would've been there to help us. I couldn't remember what happened to Anton, Christian, and Kristen. All I remember was laughing quietly along with their childish jokes and then something went over my mouth and then someone screamed and then... darkness.

I squinted my eyes even more and wriggled my arms around, but only to find that they had been bound. I tried to open my mouth to scream something out, but a rag or something was keeping me from doing so. I couldn't move my legs either, seeing that my ankles were tied. I tried to scream again, but only soft inaudible muffles were heard.

My eyes wouldn't adjust to the cave. Total darkness. Perhaps I had died and this was my personal hell, not being able to see. Or maybe I was blind. Or I was dreaming. Well, not dreaming. Nightmaring? I wasn't sure. But, I could feel warmth at my sides. Just warmth. I waited a moment or two of not moving, just sitting there. The thing that was warm on my right side moved a little bit. I froze with my eyes as wide as baseballs. Who.. or what was sitting beside me? What if it was a demonic dog that was just waiting to rip my throat out? I blinked rapidly and shivered in my skin as I no longer felt the warmth on my right side.

I let out another muffled scream, but I was interrupted by an evil voice. I refused to let the words form in my brain, so what the person said was just a giant blob of voice. I realized how far away the person sounded, so my heart rate slowly slowed. Maybe they didn't know I was here. I opened up my ears and listened through the darkness. I could hear the low hiss of a dragon. A Zippleback? No, it couldn't be. Their hisses were much, much more high-pitched. Gronckle? No, they didn't growl like that either. My mind raced through every dragon that could be found here on Berk.

I could hear the faint groan of a human, along with the scraping against something. Claws? No, that would be much thicker and louder. A human body? That sounded more like it. I could feel the thing sitting near my left side begin to stir and shake. I sat up straight, allowing the warmth around me to slowly fade away.

The silence was soon broken with the noise of thousands of metallic feet scraping up against the wet rock that was underneath me. I looked up from where I was sitting and tried to make out the outlines of the many people filtering noisily into the room, but my eyes refused to look. My senses of taste and smell slowly came back to me, making me recoil in disgust. The taste of my metallic blood filled my mouth with a vile taste and my nostrils were filled with the smell of putrid smoke and the musky smell of heavy rain.

I tried to will away those senses again, but they were adamant. I wanted to spit out the blood that I had in my mouth. Perhaps I had bit down on my tongue when I was knocked out. I didn't know. I was busying myself as I tried to keep my mind off of the smell and taste when the room erupted in a bright, orange and fiery light that made my eyes burn for several minutes.  
I blinked many times as my eyes were now perfectly adjusted. I could hear a loud gasp in my head at what I saw. There was a line of those nasty, armored men standing directly in front of me. They had shields and long knife-like weapons in the other hand. They all looked the same with the same old heavy looking metal covering every square inch of their muscle-filled bodies. They stood as still as statues, their metal-covered bodies reflecting the light of the fire several of them held.

I was too busy staring in horror at these large men to realize that the two sources of heat that were once beside me were Anton and Christian. Kristen was slumped over a few inches behind me. It wasn't until I was jabbed in the sides by Christian's tied hands. He looked as terrified as I did as he moved his arms back and forth wildly. He was motioning for me to sit where he was sitting. I scooted my rump towards him, my legs curling and uncurling as I struggled to plop down where he had been. Christian rolled his body away, allowing me to sit down.

Before my teammate could point out what he was seeing, a knight who had been standing near us turned with his shield up and his sword pointed directly at the two of us. He let Anton and Kristen be, seeing that they were remaining perfectly still. It was obvious. They didn't want us leaving one bit.

Silence fell upon the bright cave again. Well, that was until the man who was standing above Hiccup's collapsed body spoke in an evil tone, "Heh," he chuckled darkly, as his armored fingers trailed down the head of "Hiccup's" Night Fury. The dark dragon appeared to be smirking down at the wimpy chief of Berk with the same expression of his rider.

Hiccup was laying painfully flat on his chest, his face pressed up against the wet floors of the cave. When he heard the man speak, his head raised up in a swift motion. His emerald eyes were filled with anger and pain as the Knight spoke again, "What a lame excuse of a chief," he grunted as he moved away from Hiccup's fallen body, "You have no muscle on you, you have no bulkiness, you obviously don't have a brain, and.. you don't even have any sense!" The Knight tapped his head with his metallic finger as he removed his hand from the top of the Night Fury's head.

Hiccup's head turned towards "Toothless." He asked in a worried tone, "Toothless? What are you doing?" The leader of the Knight army rolled his eyes. He snapped his fingers, causing another Knight to step up from the large group and pick up the Night Fury's tail. Hiccup's eyes widened as he realized that the red paint of the dragon's tail was disappearing to reveal a perfectly fine tail fin. He whipped his head towards the Night Fury's rider.

"What do you want from me?" He screamed, "What do you want of Berk?" The Night Fury rider stepped up to Hiccup's unattached fake leg and stared down at it with an evil interest. He grunted just before he picked up the leg, "Well, Berk has the best area for dragon locations. Just think about what we could do if we had that! We could conquer the world! Now, you, you Vikings, are abusing that area. You're an idiot, Hiccup. Four dragon riders a year? That's pathetic! Things need changing, Hiccup. And now." The man in armor bent down and picked up the wooden and iron leg, letting it roll around in his large hands.  
Hiccup spat in reply, "PUT. THAT. DOWN! And dragons are happy while they are free! Four dragons a year allow them to stay happy while us Vikings live in peace with them! Do you know what would happen if you caught every single one of them and taught them your ways? DO YOU?" The Night Fury rider let out an angry grunt as he glared at Hiccup. He ignored his question and said matter-of-factly, "Keep quiet, boy, or we might just have to kill you instead of letting you off of the hook. For now. Now, this is your decision of the week. Whatever you choose might help or decrease your chance of beating us. Actually, this is your decision of your life."


	15. Chapter Fifteen: According to plan

The tall Night Fury rider let the fake leg fall to the ground in a loud clatter as he let out a low, menacing chuckle. I could hear Hiccup's thick leather vest rub up against clammy floors as he tried to stop the man from doing whatever he was doing. I couldn't see so I didn't know. The Knight proceeded to take one step closer to the line of men that were standing in front of us, but upon hearing the vest sliding against the floor, he rapidly turned. I shivered because I could see his large shadow from where we were seated.

He faced Hiccup and stared down at his wriggling body. From behind his metallic mask that protected his face, the Night Fury rider was staring down at the boy through piercing eyes. He muttered darkly, "You know.. you can't do much without that leg of yours." The man behind the mask grinned as Hiccup collapsed on the ground in defeat. His emerald eyes were locked on the knight as he turned back towards his armored minions. With a simple snap of the fingers, every single one of the men that were lining us drifted towards the other side of the large cave.

I blinked due to the amount of light that we had been protected from. I don't know how to explain what it was like.. Nearly blinding, I guess. I could feel Christian, Kristen, and Anton's heads snap up in interest as the large, armored Night Fury rider stepped up towards our group. I saw Hiccup's eyes widen in horror as they glanced wildly from us towards the corner of the cave. My eyes followed his jerky gaze all the way to the corner and nearly burst out crying at what I saw. Our dragons.

Christian's Zippleback was laying on it's back, it's little green legs flailing madly in the air. Viper's wings and tail had heavy looking chains wrapped around them with a large iron ball on the end of them, preventing him from flying. The dragon's head's jaws were wrapped in the same, iron looking chains. I winced, seeing that the Zippleback's eyes were filled with pain. I guess those chains DID hurt a lot.

I looked to the tied dragon's left and saw Anton's Monstrous Nightmare. The dragon was laying on it's side with the iron chains decorating it's ENTIRE body like a Christmas tree. Every one of Firroth's scales appeared to be covered. I guess they had to double the amount of chains. Monstrous Nightmares could easily break the amount of chains that Viper had. I saw that Firroth's eyes were closed and squinted a little bit. He was frustrated. I heard the cry of Kristen's Gronckle in the shadows of the corner. I couldn't see him, but I knew very well that the Knights had tied him up with the chains, too.

My heart fluttered in anger and hurt when I came across Aroth. My beautiful Deadly Nadder had thick chains wrapped around his chicken-like ankles. He was laying on his pale belly with his wings outstretched, but... Unmoving. His oversized jaws were covered with those scraps of iron. His handsome, golden eyes were wide open, but his black, slitted eyes were glazed over. Something black and waving around angrily caught my eye. My brown eyes shifted towards the Night Fury, who had numerous knights trying to pin the dragon down.

Toothless was covered with many chains, but that obviously wasn't helping. The leader of the Knight Group watched his men struggling with holding the beast down, his nose flared. He barked, "Dammit, men! Hold that Night Fury down!" He and I both looked back at Hiccup, who was staring at his very own dragon. I could sense that Hiccup was very close to tears, seeing that water was building up in them.

The Knight smirked, He was getting at Hiccup's sensitive side. The armored man knew about humans more than he ever knew about dragons. He knew that once you struck the sensitive side of ANY living human being, that person would soon become emotional and wouldn't think about their decisions. Needless to say, the man knew EXACTLY what he was doing and what Hiccup was going to choose. Or so he thought.

"Who shall you choose? The teenies? The ones whom you've barely known for two days. Or... the dragons? The creatures you've known for your whole life. Toothless and the gang." Behind the metal mask, the man was smirking as we all watched Hiccup's gears began to fire until they smoked. His eyes glazed over and we all sat in silence. Well, not really silence. Toothless was screaming his Night Fury scream, but it was somewhat muffled.

Many minutes ticked away. The cry of Hiccup's best friend never stopped or even slowed, it was a continuous drone in the back round. What do I mean by drone? Well, you try being in this situation. With someone who you barely know, other than "Oh, that cute boy who calls himself the chief of Berk" and your dragons who've you have bonded with already. And you can't forget that your life is in the "cute boy who calls himself the chief of Berk". Yeah. Your blood would be pounding in your ears like mine was at this time.

The Knight tapped his heavy foot impatiently against the floor, creating extra noise. I gazed sleepily across at the Night Fury rider and looked at Hiccup with a sad-ish look written across my face. How much longer? I sighed and looked at Christian, who's eyes were wide open in shock. I refused to look at Anton and Kristen, thinking that they would most likely have the same expressions.

"DECIDE," The Night Fury rider snapped when it came to a point when all of us couldn't take it any longer. Hiccup looked up sadly and his emerald eyes went between us and the dragons. "Who will it be," the armored man hissed through grit teeth, "Tell me."

Hiccup's eyes locked on us and my heart pounded with triumph. I didn't even notice the amount of sadness in his eyes or his tone until he mumbled, "Dragons?" The Knight held back evil laughter, seeing that his plan was taking place, "W-What was that?" The chief spoke louder this time, "Dragons." My heart pounded angrily in my chest cavity. How could he? He was shipping our lives away! All four of us wriggled and squirmed viciously with frustration and sorrow as the knight leader spoke out, "Alright boys. You heard him. Set those dragons free." With a lot of noise on the dragons' behalf, the men slowly fumbled with each of the dragon's iron chains. Viper, Chomper, Firroth, and Aroth were all sent blasting straight out of the cave. They screamed and cried of happiness on their way out.

Finally, Toothless was set loose. But, the other knights who hadn't been freeing the dragons now had their swords at the ready. They had this all planned out. Toothless barreled straight towards Hiccup and with a swift bend of the knees, the chief of Berk was mounted ontop of his dragon.

Toothless had his lip curled in a growl and prepared to fly out of that cave as well, but Hiccup didn't allow him. They were staying to get us.


	16. Chapter Sixteen: Fire

Hiccup's mind whirled around wildly in his skull as he slowly willed his torso to lean forward. He outstretched his hand and let his fingertips brush up against Toothless's dark scales. He sucked in a deep breath through pursed lips as he leaned back and stared directly at the leader of the Knight group.

I noticed that Toothless's blueish greenish eyes were formed into terrified slits, almost exactly how he looked if you pushed an eel into his face. His white teeth were somewhat glowing in the midst of the illuminating torches, the shadows across them dancing like a loose devil. His knees were bent into a pounce-ready position, giving him the appearance of a cat. The ears that lines his head were pushed back into an angry expression.

Toothless's rider whispered something in the language that he had somehow taught his Night Fury. The Night Fury's knees lowered a little bit more as he bobbed his head up and down in response before his gaze was brought upon the opposing Night Fury. Toothless snickered his native Night Fury language, causing the other dragon to stiffen and twitch. Hiccup's dragon snickered again. To me, he sounded as if he were laughing. It was kind of like a clicking noise. I don't know how to explain what it was like.

Christian's stare was on the Knight leader, who appeared to know what Hiccup's plan was. He rushed towards his armored Night Fury and swung his leg over it's back. He landed on the dragon's bare back (No saddle needed) with a loud clanking of armor as the pieces of metal collided.

Hiccup and the leader appeared to have a stare off. Their dragons, Toothless and Fearsome, both seemed to have a stare-off, too. Even though it was blatant that Fearsome, the armored Night Fury, was quite afraid of his enemy. The stare-off was broken when the Knight let out an inhumane whoop, causing all of his men to rush forward with their weapons pointed straight ahead of them.

I couldn't help it. I screamed at the top of my lungs and pretty soon, Christian, Kristen, and Anton were all screaming too. I could hear Christian's muffled sobs as the stopped screaming. I was pretty shocked, seeing that I never expected that Christian would EVER cry. I turned to face him with a concerned look on my face. I tried to comfort him, but that was kind of impossible when you're tied up from head to toe.

I turned around to someone or something grabbing me from behind me. They pulled me limply into their arms, kind of like the way one would hold a baby. I was going to scream until I realized who had grabbed me. A Viking. I could tell by their unnaturally large muscles, rather unhealthy looking stomach, and the worn hat that they wore with pride upon their head. And with their flaming orange hair, it was kind of obviously.

I stared at them through wide eyes and peered back at the others, who were also being picked up by similar Vikings. I could help but try and grin, but the rag covering my mouth prevented me from doing so. I felt the viking that was holding me in his over-sized arms nod to the others and silently stumble out of the cave and through a thick crack in the wall. I was pretty surprised, seeing that we hadn't been caught. I guess everyone was too busy charging to Hiccup.

Talking about Hiccup, once he caught sight of the Vikings from the back of the cave, he grinned. According to plan. He patted Toothless's neck and made his foot click into position for take-off. When the Night Fury whipped towards the entrance of the cave, extending his wings fully out, and rocketed towards the exit. It didn't take too long for the Night Fury to make it towards the gaping mouth of the cave. Hiccup looked over his shoulder, only to find that a bright blast of fire was sailing behind them. He turned his head and leaned forward into the saddle, his foot clicking into full speed position. The fireball died out long before it could catch up with them.

All four of us were carried out into the brightness of the day. It appeared that the storm had passed, but looming clouds still dotted the sky. As soon as we felt the breeze on all of our surprised faces, we were set down and all of the cloth were cut off by a handmade knife. There were more than a few sturdy vikings standing at the ready with weapons of their own, just incase something had gone wrong. Luckily, nothing had.

When the line of men and women saw us, several of them grinned and stepped away to reveal our dragons. Because our dragons hadn't been accustomed to other humans being around them, Vikings were holding them firmly down with their large muscles. They were struggling, but when they sense our presence, they stopped. The Vikings hold them down slid off of their sleek backs and allowed them to run up to us like happy children.

We were nuzzled and snorted on as a greeting, causing us to giggle quietly. Anton was even licked by his Monstrous Nightmare! Do you know how hard that is, getting a lick from a dragon? That's pretty dang rare!

While we were being greeted by our dragons, Toothless and Hiccup were sailing up towards the sky. They were headed towards the clouds, where ANY enemy that would be following them would soon get lost. Nobody knew the clouds better than the expert dragon rider, Hiccup. 


	17. Chapter Seventeen: Lucan

The tall, bulky Knight leader swore angrily under his breath as he realized that Hiccup and Toothless had gotten away. He slowed his Night Fury to a stop near the cave entrance and waited for his men to catch up with him. When one of his men, a slim boy who wore armor that was way too large for him, informed him that we had gotten away, the leader was furious.

"S-Sir," The shrimpy boy whispered nervously as his heavy metal bounced around his body, "I'm a-afraid I'm the bearer of.. bad news." He glanced behind him and saw the others in his group throw their weapons and swords down on the wet cave floor and began to remove their warm helmets. The leader, Tegyr, whipped around to face the boy who spoke. "What is it, boy?" He hissed as he prepared his new Night Fury for a long flight. He was going to take this "Hiccup" down.

"The hostages... they have escaped." Tegyr's eyes widened in horror as he yelled in the boy's metallic face. "Where have they gone?" In response, the small knight shuddered as he stuttered, "W-We don't know, sir. There were no witnesses." The small knight in large armor eyed Tegyr's Night Fury, who was staring angrily ahead of him. He shuddered in his metal as he waited for his commands.

"Lucan," the knight leader said in a furious tone, causing the boy's head to snap up at attention upon hearing his name. "Yes, sir?" "Take a dragon. Any dragon. Preferably a Monstrous Nightmare, and search for them. Once you find them... Kill them. I don't care where, just do it." And at that, Tegyr pulled a newly made knife out from his belt and handed it towards the shivering Lucan.

"A-are you sure that you-" Tegyr let out an annoyed sigh as he let his head bob in a swift nod. He continued, "Try to kill the dragons, too. But if you can't, I can easily handle that." The leader let a heavy hand pat the Night Fury next to him's rough head, "Hide the bodies somewhere that nobody will look. Vikings are persistent and will look everywhere for four missing.. children. Don't throw them in the ocean, they will just float back to the island. Got it?" Lucan looked away as he lifted a hand behind his neck. He tried massaging his neck, but that didn't quite work with all of this useless metal on.

"I g-guess so.." He muttered from behind his mask as his blue eyes slowly lost their happiness. "Good," his instructor replied before allowing his dragon to fly out of the cave in one swift flick of the wings. Lucan watched the dark figure of the two disappear through the clouds before he turned around and walked back into the depths of the cave. He heard several snickers from the other knights as he passed by them.

They were always laughing at him, the knights. Unlike us Vikings, Knights were cruel, rude, and flat out mean. They were like rats, always competing to see who's the best at this or that, and always measuring themselves up to each other. Being rather unmuscular, Lucan was almost always being teased for his size and his lack of ability to win any competitions. However, Knights DID have one disability. They weren't as cunning, even if they DID prank each other like children. It took them quite a while to form out a decent strategy and they weren't so... knowledgeable as us.

In their own world, teaching wasn't enforced. People who were taught things were frowned upon and people who WANTED to learn things were beat up by others and teased quite a lot. Lucan was one of these people. He LOVED to learn more things, especially about the different types of dragons. Because of this, he had his nose almost always crammed in a dragon dictionary. Needless to say, he often returned to his house with a black eye, a bruised cheek, or even a split lip. He once got in a nasty fight with one of the largest Knights of his age group (17 or 18), which ended with the breaking of his hand. His poor lips had been split in so many different places and his cheek had been bruised so much that he had a permanent, dark purple splotch on his right cheek and deep, ugly scars lined his pale lips. To most, he's a sore sight to see.

But, Lucan tried his best to walk tall and proudly. He couldn't quite achieve that, seeing that he had he had a large bruise on the bottom of his left foot from his last encounter with another Knight, adding a limp to his step, but he didn't quite care. He smiled proudly from under his mask as he stepped out of the main area of the cave and wriggled through a small opening that lead towards a different room with a hidden exit. The Knights used this room as the dragon threshold; the dragon pen.

As Lucan limped into the torch-lit room, he removed the helmet that made his head ten times more heavy. His light hair that looked like the snow that fell from the sky over Berk fell over his eyes and ended just shy of the bridge of his nose. He pushed the hair out of his sky blue eyes as he let his fingers graze the purple skin of his bruised right cheek. He winced, but continued walking. The eyes of many dragons were brought towards him as he walked towards them.

He eyed all of the dragons, searching for one that he would want to ride. He looked at a plump Gronckle that was snoozing on the hard floors of the cave before he shook his head. Only the largest of Knights rode Gronckles, the ones that would crush any other dragon with their weight. He walked carefully up towards a green-ish Deadly Nadder, who was staring down at him through one single, golden-flecked eye. He shrugged his skinny shoulders. He could ride a Nadder, even if they DID have a tendency to dive down in the middle of flight. Perhaps. He moved towards the back of the room, spotting a Night Fury. No. He shook his bruised and scarred face. Night Furies were for Tegyr ONLY. Not even for knowledgeable riders like himself.

Lucan walked towards a Zippleback, who was leaning casually up against a cave wall. One of it's heads, the one who spat smoke, snaked down curiously towards him with happy eyes. It nuzzled it's one head up against him when it realized who it was. Lucan rather liked Zipplebacks, they had pretty markings. But, one wouldn't last a long flight like this.

Well, Monstrous Nightmare it was. The small Knight stepped up to the first Nightmare he saw and carefully stroked it's warm scales. He felt it's eyes be brought upon him as he carefully mounted the beast by swinging one careful leg over it's large shoulders. When he was seated, Lucan patted the dragon's orange neck.

He slowly lead the dragon up towards the exit, careful not to step on any wandering Terrible Terrors. When they were at the edge, he allowed the Nightmare to bolt outside, it's wings fully outstretched in a happy glide. In the pit of the boy's heart, Lucan knew that he wasn't going to be able to kill anyone. Not even his enemy. His fingers touched the knife without knowing it as he carefully shut his eyes.

He didn't know what we were like yet. He hadn't met us, he didn't know. But he was soon going to find out. 


	18. Chapter Eighteen: Target

After the large greetings from our dragons ended, one of our saviors called out. He sounded pretty terrified with his shrill voice. One large arm was pointing up at an ominous cloud, the other arm shielding his eyes from the overbearing sun. "Hey!" He called out to all of us, causing several of us, dragons included, to jump. I felt my head snap towards his direction, along with the other's necks.

A bulky female Viking walked up towards the man with the arm in the sky, her chubby fingers swirling around the man's tanned shoulder. "What is it?" She asked in her thick voice that was almost as deep as a dragon's roar. I guess that was pretty common for adult female Vikings to have deep voices. It was only natural here on Berk.

"Look!" The male replied briskly, causing the woman's head to turn up towards the grey sky. Her chocolate colored eyes narrowed in a squint. We all knew the female Viking was about to say something along the lines of 'I don't see anything,' but, she was stopped short. The scream of two Night Furies rung through the cloud, along with the flash of not one, not two, not three, but SEVERAL shots of fire. I swore I could see the large, dark shadow of Toothless and Hiccup. But, the shadow had disappeared after I stupidly blinked my eyes. For a few moments, silence overcame everything. My heart sunk and my eyes stinged with tears. At first, I thought that the leader of Berk had lost to the leader of Knights, but then the pair appeared out of the clouds. And were headed straight towards our group.

They were flying relatively low to the ground as they flew towards us. I could see Hiccup flailing and squirming like an idiot in his saddle before he landed for a few moments. He flew off of his saddle as soon as Toothless's front feet touched down on the ground. His Night Fury's back was arched, his teeth bared and his black eyes slitted. The two looked very afraid, almost like the world was going to end. Hiccup scanned our small group, his lips lit up with a some-what satisfied grin. "Good to see you all back safe and sound."

His emerald eyes were turned towards the adult Vikings that were surrounding the four of us, their green irises gleaming in the dim sunlight. Now, he appeared to be unafraid from moments earlier. Same old Hiccup, his mood changing every minute of the day. He said in a soft tone, "Let's get back to the village, hm?" The older Vikings surrounding us were astonished. How the boy could go from frightened to cheerful in 2.5 seconds was way over them.

The scream of Tegyr and his Night Fury belt out into the wind, it's screechy tone hitting every high note invented. They were trapped in the labyrinth of the clouds. Hiccup paid no notice, he only waited patiently for someone to get the handiman he used to work with 5 years earlier, Gobber, to fetch him a new fake leg. In the mean time, I was busy watching Hiccup lean casually up against Toothless. The chief was trying to calm his frightened dragon by stroking the beast's dark scales.

I was watching until the oversized head of my Deadly Nadder came ramming into my side. I nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned towards Aroth before letting my hand stroke his scales, too. He seemed to enjoy the amount of attention he was getting, seeing that his eyelids looked like he was about to fall asleep. I grinned softly at him and continued petting him until Gobber's ugly Gronckle appeared on the site.

It was near sundown before Hiccup had gotten a leg to strap to his stump. By the time he had gotten it on, Lucan and his Monstrous Nightmare were slicing through the sky in search of the four of us. The small Knight was beginning to have second thoughts when he realized what he had gotten himself into. Murder, that's what he was getting himself into. He considered turning the orange dragon back around when he felt the pang of guilt in his gut that he got every once in a while.

Perhaps he shouldn't kill us. He could steal the Monstrous Nightmare away as his own source of transportation and build a small hut on Berk that only suited him and his dragon... No. That wouldn't work. He would be found. But, Lucan knew that he couldn't kill anyone, he couldn't even hurt a dragonfly if he wanted to! How in the world was he going to get this job done?

His deep thoughts were interrupted when his eyes caught onto the ground below him and his partially hidden dragon. He knew what he saw. His target. Us. 


	19. Chapter Nineteen: Orange Death

It took Hiccup a little while to get used to the new fake leg that Gobber had given him. While he was stumbling, hopping, and limping around like a maniac, the somewhat famous blacksmith was grinning at us. His thick hands were on his hips with his round belly pulling over his brown belt. His mouth was slightly open to reveal a makeshift tooth that was crafted out of a solid, grey stone. I was kind of creeped out by the fact that his mouth was open, but it was almost ALWAYS open due to the formation of his jaw.

He said in a nearly shouting voice, "Well, look-eh here!" His accent was quite strong as his voice yelled happily, " 'Is the trainin' dragon riders!" He removed his hands off of his hips and grasped them around Anton and I's shoulders. He shook us so hard that my head hurt for a little while after. When Gobber stopped shaking us, my eyes spun around in my skull as I heard him exclaim. "Nice 'te see all a you alive!"

Gobber continued chatting with us until Hiccup was comfortable with moving around in his new fake leg and seated on the back of his robust dragon. Toothless stealthily crept up behind Gobber and stopped just a few feet behind. The Night Fury's head twisted back towards his rider before turning back to the blacksmith and opening his large mouth in a large roar. It was all in good fun. Toothless enjoyed toying with Gobber.

I had clapped my hands over my ears a few moments after Toothless's prank, even though I was somewhat accustomed to loud noises. I don't know what it was, perhaps the frightening screams of Night Furies that used to attack Berk several years ago, but that scream made me scared.

I removed my hands from my ears and faked a grin. Hiccup appeared to be chuckling to himself, Gobber appeared to be yelling at Toothless, Toothless looked like he was laughing too, and my teamates were laughing along with Hiccup. When everyone's laughs faded, Hiccup cleared his throat. He opened his mouth, his attention drawing towards the four of us.

"Ready to head back?" He grinned quietly as his green eyes scanned us for any sign of reaction. It wasn't until Christian was the first to bob his head in a quick nod that the rest of us caught on. We all eventually nodded, including the blushing Kristen. Hiccup nodded in response, his shiny brown hair glinting happily in the sunlight. There was a quick scream of our enemy's leader, Tegyr's Night Fury, as they were still trapped in the cloud. I kind of felt sorry for them.

Hiccup's hands curled around the edge of Toothless's saddle before he turned in his seat to face Gobber. "You may leave now, Gob. Thanks for the help." The old, chubby Viking nodded before mounting his fat Gronckle and taking to the sky. We all watched them turn and fly straight towards the village, which we could see up from up on the side of this steep mountain.

The small chief of Berk turned towards us before he grunted a quick, "Today's been a busy day. Great training, all of you. You can go home now, don't forget to fly back to the training arena for the night. I can't have nearly wild dragons burning the village down. Good night." With a quick flick of the ankles, Toothless bolted off of the side of the mountain and rocketed towards the setting sun; the village.

I turned towards the person closest to me, Anton, and grinned nervously at him. "It's been some day, eh?" He nodded and stared up at his Monstrous Nightmare, who seemed to be acting strangely. It's head was almost turning constantly and his large snout at pointed up at the sky. His lips were pulled back into an angry snarl, almost as if somebody was else.

"Firroth," the Nightmare's rider snapped in a soft tone, "That's quite enough of that." Anton's head turned up towards the sky to see if anything was there and of course, he didn't. "See?" He said, "There's nothing there, boy!" The dragon's head lowered to the ground, almost in shame. His snarl disappeared and his eyes looked rather glossy. It didn't cheer up when Anton stroked it's graceful, snake-like neck with a quick pat as he began to mount the beast.

The Monstrous Nightmare's head raised when Anton was grasping the edges of his saddle. It turned to look at Viper, who had Christian draped across his back like a curtain. I looked at my towering Aroth and was about to hop onto his arching back, but then I heard the shocking scream of a Knight and the roar of a Monstrous Nightmare.

Lucan had been making his Nightmare swirl around above us until he was certain that our teacher had left. Now that he WAS gone, he could finally at least ATTEMPT to do his job. If he didn't try, he would most likely be beat up by the others. He felt his pale fingers slither up to his mouth and feel the deep scars that lined his lips. Lucan shuddered on the back of his dragon.

With a deep, mighty breath, Lucan leaned forward on the bare back of the orange dragon. The dragon instantly dove down through the spot they had been circling through, making themselves visible. However, they only appeared to be an orange blob. Lucan let out a frightened scream, seeing that he felt like his stomach was turning its self inside out. In reply, the Monstrous Nightmare let out a ferocious scream as it's large eyes locked upon it's targets.

Out of instinct, the dragon opened it's jaws and let out a large fireball that zoomed straight towards us. I hadn't noticed the fireball until Kristen screamed her lungs out. The ball of fire crashed into the side of the mountain, making the ground underneath my feet tremble. I lost my balance, sending me to the ground. However, Aroth stepped one foot over my fallen body. I smiled up at his white belly. My protector. His blue head looked underneath him to make sure that I was alright before he looked up.

I looked to my right, only to see the stubby feet of Christian's Zippleback stumble up towards the oncoming enemy Monstrous Nightmare. I could hear one of it's heads squeak loudly before it was obvious that they both fired their fireballs at the dragon. The Monstrous Nightmare yelped in the distance, it's wings swaying to regain a normal flight pattern.

Lucan felt like he was going to fall off, but he kept on hanging onto the horns on the back of the dragon's back. The dragon fired another blast towards us, but that one sizzled out before it could crash into any of us. Lucan bit his lip, realizing that his dragon had run out of fuel for an effective blast of fire. Looks like he had to land.

He steered his dragon for a landing on the small cliff. By the time he had landed, I was out from under Aroth's oversized hindlegs and was staring wide-eyed at the white-haired boy. I watched him bring out a nice looking knife from his heavy armor. His Monstrous Nightmare charged straight at Firroth, it's jaws outstretched hungrily. It appeared that Anton's dragon was charging, too.

Lucan scanned the area for his first target. Seeing that nobody was to my left anymore, his eyes locked on me. He shuddered in his skin as he, like his dragon, charged. He at his knife out and at the ready. I saw him coming from the corner of my eye and Aroth did too. Luckily, my Deadly Nadder was quick at the senses.

With one quick movement and a quick blur of his blue scales, Aroth's tail's horns were all sticking out and his muscles were tensed. He appeared to be waiting for the right moment. When Lucan was barely 5 yards away, he made his move. With a quick flick of his hefty legs, Aroth swung his left leg straight at the shrimpy Knight. When Lucan had been knocked over, Aroth swung his right leg straight at his fallen body.

Lucan his the ground with a painful amount of force, his heavy armor slapping his body with a large amount of pain. He was trying to squirm away from the large Deadly Nadder, but it was too late. Aroth had his right foot right on top of his shiny armor, his long claws locking him into an unmoving position. He and I were both staring in horror as Aroth's jaws opened to reveal a forming fireball. I knew that he had the Knight pinned, but he couldn't kill him. I couldn't deal with having the weight of killing someone upon my chest. 


	20. Chapter Twenty: Hurt

Lucan jumped up in a blur when the large amount of weight was relieved off of his armor. He looked down at the shiny metal, taking a mental note about the small cracks lining his armor. His dark eyes flickered over towards the knife that lay on the ground.

Anton and Christian slowly approached where the two of us had been standing. When I heard them coming, I turned around only to see black scorch marks lining their faces, especially Anton's. I couldn't help but laugh, seeing that their hair looked like a mixture of speed and charcoal.

Anton's face wrinkled up angrily as he neared the Knight, not really caring that somebody was laughing at his physical appearance. Christian didn't seem to be interested in Lucan, but the dragon's armor. Christian was the kind of guy that it would take a lot to set him off. This wasn't one of these times.

Christian's eyes flickered towards the metallic knight before he let a hand rest on the shiny metal. I didn't pay much attention to the Zippleback rider, my eyes were locked on Anton. He was stepping into Lucan's masked face, glaring directly into the large break in metal used for the people inside to see out of. "What's the big idea?" Anton yelled in a frustrated voice, "Why are you trying to kill us?"

"Anton," I whispered shortly after he was screaming at the Knight. "What?" He turned towards me, his eyes blazing as angrily as dragon's fire. I winced when I realized that he had increased his tone towards his own team mate. I couldn't help but increase my voice straight back at him. "He's not trying to kill us right now, is he?" I could feel the hidden eyes of Lucan on me, but I didn't care right now.

My words made Anton use his brain for once. As if he were a stubborn child, Anton replied a few moments later, "But he tried to kill us before, didn't he? His relatives were trying to kill Hiccup, and you are sticking up for him?" I lowered my gaze, suddenly feeling ashamed from ever stepping into this battle.

There was silence for a minute or two before Lucan had a say in this bickering. "Uh," he said in a low enough tone that we couldn't hear him. Then, he spoke up by clearing his throat. That caused Anton and I, even Christian, to look up from what we were looking at.

"What do you want, Knight?" Anton said darkly. From behind his mask, Lucan's eyes rolled. How pathetic, to call someone by the name of their group. "First of all," the sheepish Knight said, "Don't call me Knight." Anton was stubborn. So naturally, he tried to protest, "But that's what you are-" The Knight stopped him short. "I may be a Knight, but I'm not one of them." "That doesn't make any sense!"

Christian wasn't interested in the Monstrous Nightmare's armor anymore. In fact, he had left the snake-like dragon behind to listen to our conversation. He was kind of annoyed with Anton at the moment, but then again, who wasn't? The quiet boy glanced at Anton and said quietly, "Shut it, Anton. Just listen to him." I tried to hide a grin before the Zippleback rider spoke again. "So, uh... Why aren't you like these Knights?"

We watched Lucan's head slowly droop a little bit. It was kind of hard to tell if it was because of the weight of the armor or his emotions getting to him. He was a little bit hesitant about telling us and I supposed I would be, too. It was kind of quiet, despite the loud breathing of the armored Nightmare sitting calmly beside us. It looked like it was in a trance, it's eyes staring straight ahead of it's large snout.

The Knight took in a quick breath before he raised his arms. I jumped from his sudden movement, my muscles tensing with fear. But then I realized he was reaching for his helmet. I watched his fingers slide under the mask and pausing as he was just about to take the heavy thing off. We were all kind of anxious to see what was underneath that mask, perhaps an ugly man with a beard or something along those lines.

And then his took the mask off. I nearly jumped out of my skin at what I saw. His scarred lips probably scared me the most. It wasn't the oh-there-are-ghosts-living-in-my-house scared, it was quite the opposite. I was scared for Lucan, even though I didn't know what had happened to him at the time. It's kind of hard to describe.

I could hear Anton gasp. "What HAPPENED to you?" He asked, suddenly no longer feeling angry towards Lucan. The boy's dark eyes looked away from us as he began to tell his story. "Well.. I'm different. I know you all know that upon seeing my.. facade, but I wasn't always like this. Knights are terrible creatures, much like rats, they compete to see who's the best. They eat MORE than what a dragon eats in a whole week and they like it. Therefore, they're always competing to see who's the most muscular and who's the most.. obese. My whole life, I've never really liked to eat much food or make myself as muscular as them... But, I love books. I love learning, unlike the rest of the Knights. I read them a lot, and I still do." He paused to take a deep breath.

"Knights are practically big bullies. If you're different than them, they hold it against you and eventually.. beat you. That's what they do, they hit you, kick you, punch you.. break you. They broke my hand one time. My lips are scarred only because of them, they split them so many times that they couldn't handle it anymore. My cheek is bruised only because they've punched me there too many times.. I guess I've gotten used to all of it, but it still hurts sometimes." 


	21. Chapter TwentyOne: Impatience

I guess we all kind of discussed the topic of Knights shortly after, seeing that I can't recall much of what happened. All I can remember is the fact that Christian was being more social than he had ever been. Kirsten kind of disappeared during that point in time. I think... But after that discussion, I can remember clearly of what had happened.

Anton had his arms crossed over his furry coat. There was a small smile plastered upon his face from a recently cracked joke. There were happy sparkles dancing around in his eyes. We were all smiling, even the shy Knight that seemed to be drooping lower and lower by the second. Christian's eyes were brought towards the sagging boy and his happy expression turned confused. "What's wrong?" He asked in a nervous tone, his feet stepping one or two steps closer to Lucan. In several moments, Lucan had fallen to the ground.

The boy with white hair pushed the bangs out of his eyes before staring up at us. He had been smiling from the funny joke that had just been spoken, but when he saw our stares, he frowned. He acted like he hadn't heard Christian's question, causing my teammate to ask again. He heard him that time. The armored man grinned cheekily again and spoke. "I'm fine. This metal is just too heavy!"

Christian and Anton eventually had to help him get up. We all laughed quietly as the two boys of the group held out their hands for Lucan to grab. The Knight grabbed hold and pulled his weight up, causing Christian and Anton to nearly lose their balance. They lost their balance, but luckily, they didn't fall.

By this time, Aroth had grown quite impatient. Earlier, he had been standing several yards behind me. His wings were tucked closely to his slender body, his tail flailing around in the soft breeze. But now.. his wings were outstretched and flapping around. He was stomping his feet on the ground, his unnaturally long nails digging furiously into the solid ground. There are STILL markings on that small cliff from his frustration. His head swung from side to side, his eyes narrowed to soft slits. He opened his large jaws, revealing his gleaming teeth. Arothe let out a bored roar, causing all of us (Dragons included) to jump.

"Aroth!" I exclaimed, twisting around in the middle of our conversation. I put my hands on my hips and stared up at him, my eyes straining into a soft glare. His head turned to one side, putting me out of his blind spot. He crouched down, his feet shuffling closer and closer to me. Pretty soon, his golden eye was only inches away from my face. The Deadly Nadder's jaws were opening and closing, making strange noises that sounded something like a dying cat. Or perhaps a gobbling turkey. I can't decide...

Anyways, Aroth was putting up a big fit. I was glaring at him until the shy Knight spoke up, stepping quietly up to my side. My dragon's attention was brought towards him, his lip curling up to reveal his teeth again. He snarled angrily, his eyes narrowing even further. Lucan raised his hands up in a comforting gesture before he began to back off.

The armored Monstrous Nightmare sitting in the back leaped into action when he saw the first sign of Aroth threatening his temporary rider. It jumped straight in front of the boy, it's jaws opening into a response growl. Aroth's head pulled back and his neck curled around me like a snake. The Monstrous Nightmare then retreated back towards where he had been standing moments before.

When Lucan was in Aroth's term of "Safe distance away," my dragon stopped growling. The Nadder uncurled his neck from me, allowing me to see everybody. I could hear Lucan laugh quietly from a distance away. "Looks like you got yourself a protector!" I nodded my head, patting Aroth's forehead with the soft palm of my hand.

My dragon wouldn't leave me alone after nodding my head. He kept on slamming his skull and horn into my back and sides, causing me to bruise all over the place. All four of us had resumed a quite normal discussion, much like we had all known each other for years. However, you can't keep talking with some creature jabbing you. Aroth wanted to leave. Now. He was quite impatient, don't you think? 


	22. Chapter TwentyTwo: New Addition

I was fed up with all of the poking and prodding. I swiveled around to face the massive beast looming over my head. His golden-flecked eyes stared at me with curiosity and excitement; several mammal-like barks escaping from his over-sized jaws. My hands found their place on my hips as I let out a sigh before reaching out to lightly graze the brilliantly colored scales of my Deadly Nadder.

I closed my eyes and smiled as I retracted my hand from the tip of his nose. My head pulled around towards the boys who seemed lost in their conversation. I glanced at the darkening sky and knew at once that the day had been ending. I decided not to say anything; who would notice that we were gone for an extra 10 minutes? Our parents would most likely think that we were running a little bit late at dragon training.

When only the last few slivers of the golden sun were visible over the horizon, somebody finally decided to speak up. It was Kristen, her silky hair bouncing lightly off of her thin shoulders. She had been sitting in the shadows of the cliff with her Gronckle for all of this time. And now, she had found the courage to stand up and say something about how dark it was getting.

"C'mon guys," Kristen said quietly, pulling a piece of hair out of her eyes. "It's getting dark. Don't you think that our parents'll get worried if we're out here this long?" I could see her eyes trace towards the darkened outline of our little village on Berk. I followed her gaze and saw the flickering lights of candles being lit outside and inside of houses. Christian, Anton, and Lucan all looked up. Their expressions were puzzled, with their eyebrows knotted together and their lips pulled into a straight line.

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out. I closed my gaping mouth and turned around towards Aroth. I hopped onto his back, which he had conveniently lowered for me. When Aroth stood tall, I was several yards above the boys' heads. "Yeah," I managed to squeak out, "We don't want search parties being sent out for us, do we?" I merely got two head shakes.

As Christan and Anton stumbled blindly towards their dragons, I caught Lucan looking glum. A single eyebrow of mine raised itself into a questioning look. But he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at the ground. "What's wrong?" I asked from above. His eyes flickered up for a minute or two before sinking back to the ground.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing, I think. It's just that.. uh.. I'd much rather be a Viking. Knights are too hot-headed for me." His pale eyes looked up at my dragon and I again. They glittered with numerous emotions; things such as hate, sadness, and happiness were the only things I could identify. His scarred lips pulled into a faint, fake smile as he cut me off from saying something. "But things won't change, eh?"

I looked at our village for a minute as I comprehended what Lucan had said. I wasn't sure how to respond. I wanted him to stay, but what would Hiccup do? He'd most likely feed him to the bulkiest dragon he could find. Luckily for me, Christian and Viper stepped into the conversation. "Come on, Lucan," he said shyly. His thin, black hair had fallen over his eyes. "We can squeeze you into Berk somehow."

Lucan's sparkling eyes dulled into a glazed look. He glanced at my teammate and stated, "It's not that ea-" Christian's glare stopped him in his tracks. There were dragon flames in his eyes. I had never seen Christian give somebody that expression before. Needless to say, it kind of startled me.

"You," Christian mumbled darkly, "Are you coming with us or what?" I gulped and added on dryly, "It's not like they're going to miss you or anything.."

I could see thoughts buzz across Lucan's field of vision. His expression was blank and clear, showing no particular mood. He was contemplating. By this time, I remember Anton and Kirsten progressing their dragons towards us. And soon, all of us were standing around the scarred Knight boy.

Silence surrounded the five of us; the only thing audible was the soft crash of the waves surrounding Berk. Anton, Christian, Kristen, and I all looked at each other with confused or worried expressions. Our attentions only were brought towards the Knight when he was thrown back into reality and his decision was final.

Before he stated his answer, he crawled on top of his multicolored Monstrous Nightmare and grinned at us. His eyes sparkled again and his emotion was restored. "I'm coming with you guys." And at those very words, all of us cut through the night sky with our dragons. We were headed home again. 


	23. Chapter TwentyThree: Invader

We all landed our ferocious, mighty dragons within Hiccup's enclosed forest arena. We dismounted our sturdy pets and bid them farewell. We all eventually escaped through the small crack in the immense boulder-covered area; if we hadn't gone in a single filed line, we probably would've gotten stuck in between the massive rocks.

The dark shadows of the towering trees shivered in the silver sliver of moonlight. A cool breeze nipped at our exposed cheeks and hands; even with our warm, fuzzy fur coats, some of us were shivering. I could hear Kirsten's shiny white teeth chatter against each other as her feet stumbled blindly in the darkness.

Little did we know, a flabby Knight was sitting boldly on the back of an equally weighted Gronkle. The Gronckle's emerald eyes glowed silently amongst the darkness that engulfed the forest. Several snorts of steaming hot air blew calmly towards the twinkling, night sky. The Knight's angered eyes followed our every move. He was stationed there on the softly sloping hill of the forested area, forced to watch for any movement. He had found one of his targets. Hiccup's trainees.

The Knights had set themselves up throughout our village's areas. One was stationed around the bridge that we needed to cross to enter our village; another group consisting of two or three men were sitting in the still shadows of our buildings. They were waiting for somebody to stir, somebody to step out of the protection of their house. They needed to record our daily outings to cunningly predict their war strategy.

The overweight Knight that sat on the hill above us had been told that there were four of us. But from where he was sitting, he could count five of us moving swiftly through the darkened trees. The Knight knew very well that it wasn't Hiccup; others had noted his absence. His eyes narrowed and the Knight's eyebrows knitted together in confusion: Who was the fifth person?

The heavy man eased himself off of the Gronckle's muscular back when we had gotten far enough ahead. He quickly motioned towards his bulky dragon to remain where it was as he proceeded to follow our worn path. He traveled as silently as he could, which would make us less unaware of his presence. He was less than five feet behind us before he was able to identify the mysterious fifth person to our party. Lucan.

Hiccup's light brown eyes surveyed his bedroom. He drew in a disturbed breath as he eyed everything that he owned, even though he had seen them thousands of times before. He stepped into the darkened room, hearing Toothless's easy, even breath that signified his dragon's slumber. He ignored the background noise as he got down onto his hands and knees to peer underneath the slightly raised bed.

Something to him didn't seem right. Ever since he had stepped foot into his house, Hiccup had sensed somebody else's presence. He was disturbed by the feeling and he had looked everywhere for the person he was sensing. Toothless had sensed it too; he growled every moment he had while he was awake. Hiccup had to prove to himself that somebody had been in his house, whether it be even the slightest movement of his possessions or the sounds of another person.

Hiccup's attention drew back up to the dim ceiling when he hadn't seen anything under his bed. He sat on his bottom with his legs splayed out. He leaned back on his hands and allowed his thoughts to wander. But before long, a noise of shuffling feet broke his concentration. Toothless was woken from his deep sleep, his eyes narrowed and slitted.

A deep, horrifying growl came from Toothless's hidden throat. Hiccup was sent rocketing up to his feet, swiveling around to find the invader in the night.

Metal reflected the moon's light from the open window. The leader of the Knights, Tegyr stood in the middle of the wooden floorboards. A long sword had been drawn from the belt underneath his metal suit of armor, and it was pointed directly at Hiccup's throat. It gleamed the moon's reflections into the boy's startled, weary eyes.

"Still haven't given up the fight?" Tegyr snapped from behind his mask of mineral. His voice ricocheted and vibrated throughout his suit and poured into the room. Toothless jumped up from where he had once been peacefully laying, but a long, sleek shadow pounced from the corner. Hiccup's Night Fury yelped and cried in severe pain as another Night Fury, Tegyr's new Night Fury, pinned him down. The enemy's Night Fury bit harshly down on Toothless's flapping wing.

Toothless screamed as Hiccup raced helplessly to aid his dragon. Tegyr snapped his hands and in an instant, his Night Fury's mouth opened to reveal a set of ferocious, bared teeth. The Night Fury lowered it's enormous jaws to Toothless's exposed throat. Hiccup screamed and Tegyr's mask turned towards the shuddering boy.

"Give up," he hissed, "And I'll gladly have my dragon kill yours. Accept the challenge, and I'll happily slaughter all of your people. Your choice." Hot tears blazed through Hiccup's eyes. He stared at Toothless, who was wailing loudly due to the wound on his wing. His hair fell over his eyes as his cheeks grew warm and numb.

"I..." He whispered through grit teeth, "I-I.. won't let you kill Toothless." Tegyr snapped his fingers again and the Night Fury slunk unhappily back towards his master. Tegyr smirked from behind his mask; he knew this was going to happen. Any boy with a dragon would rather have his best friends killed than his dragon. His dragon WAS his best friend.

"Challenge accepted," the Knight leader sneered as he turned on his heel and made his way towards the door. "We'll attack at dusk tomorrow." He let a laugh vibrate through the night as he slipped out of Hiccup's house without another word. 


	24. Chapter TwentyFour: The Shout

Lucan and I walked together while the others delightedly bolted several feet in front of us. I could hear their lengthy laughter howl and weave through the silent trees, their quickened feet fall upon lifeless, fallen leaves and branches. A ghostly smile lingered upon my face as I watched their disappearing figures dissolve into the oncoming background. Though I longed to join them, I slowed my strides in order to walk along with the sluggish Knight. Nobody could be left alone, new-comers especially.

Lucan looked uncomfortable as we continued our long journey on foot. He looked edgy; he kept on turning his head around to look at the stirred path behind us. His eyes appeared to be full of worry, as if he suspected something dangerous were about to occur. The moonlight on his face made him look unhealthily pale and apprehensive lines arose to his face. "Hey," I said uneasily as his head circled around to look behind us. "Is there something wrong?"

My eyebrows furrowed in bewilderment; was he nervous about coming with us, or was he just looking at the surrounding landscape? The lack of conversation soon bore down on me, which caused me to become more distressed. "Lucan," I said in a harsh whisper. "I asked you something. It would be polite if you answered it."

I know it was impolite of ME to tell him that, but I couldn't help it. He was worrying me.

"Hm?" He answered briefly, "Um... Sorry. I'm just.. tired, that's all."

He marched forward, advancing past me by a couple inches. I quickened my pace to join with him, feeling a little bit more than disturbed. I looked at the oncoming, white-washed bridge in front of us. The grin had long since faded from my face, though it quickly returned with the soft whisper of wind as it blew through my hair.

I knew that I had made a grave mistake as I carelessly stepped onto that bridge. I hadn't noticed the shadows hovering ominously next to the bridge. The sound of vociferous shouts entered my ear drums and I stopped in my tracks. I turned to where Lucan would have been standing, only to be greeted by the empty darkness of the forest.

"Lucan?" I screamed as I looked rapidly around, but it wasn't long until the Knight watching over the bridge had landed. By the time that I turned, the Knight had dismounted his dragon, an emerald Zippleback. The man was approaching me.

"Come here, girly," He smirked from behind his mask, his unknown accent strong and pure. "I'm not going to hurt 'ya." A laugh vibrated through the night's breeze.

A shiver danced down my spine as I looked abruptly behind me. Lucan was still no where to be seen. The Knight was approaching. A deadly-looking Zippleback stood in the way of the bridge. I had no choice but to turn back, but that seemed like the choice a fool would take. And I certainly was no fool.

Hot tears grew in my eyes as I shivered one last time. I mouthed a quick, "I'm sorry, Lucan," and sprinted hurriedly towards the Knight and his armored dragon. I couldn't believe that I had to leave Lucan behind, but it was the only way I would be able to get away.

I closed my eyes as I grew closer to the bulky man. I only opened my eyes when I heard his coos fade. I looked ahead, only to see the green Zippleback standing several yards in front of me. I bit my tongue as I neared it, sending the taste of my metallic blood springing to my dry mouth.

The bridge was wide enough for me to run around the dragon. It hissed ferociously at me, but never attempted to fire a fireball towards my way. My heart raced within my chest as I continued racing towards Berk; the place that would guarantee my immediate safety.

As I neared the end of the bridge, a single shout broke my entire concentration. "RUN, FRIDA," The voice shouted from the other side of the bridge. I identified the voice almost immediately: Lucan's scream. I abruptly stopped running to turn towards the cry, only to see the oncoming Knight running towards my direction. A tear ran down my face as the shout returned. "RUN!"

I did not hesitate to continue my long dash. The blood pounded in my ears and my sides ached. My eyes were watery and I couldn't see properly. I was sucking in the icy, cold air through my mouth in long breaths. My legs ran as long and far as they could take me. When I was sure the fat Knight had stopped running after me, I slowed. I coughed and stuttered. Phlegm ran through my throat and bloody mouth. I spat out that red blood and saliva onto the ground.

The tears I had been holding back came pouring down my face. My chest, shoulders, and back heaved as I broke into sobs. I didn't even stop my crying when I continued running towards my house.

The only thought that I could think was: I promise, I'll come back to get you, Lucan. Thinking those words didn't help stifle my crying. 


	25. Chapter TwentyFive: Bad News

I threw my shoulder violently into the wooden, sturdy door of my house that prevented me from getting indoors. Fresh tears left small trails upon my cheeks and quickly wiped away the dry remnants of old tears. My eyes felt puffy and my head throbbed; I felt ill and feverish. The horrid sound of a dragon's fiery, enraged scream pierced through the night and rung in my ear drums just before I stepped into the comfort zone of my house.

I was more or less surprised to find candles lit scattered throughout the shadows of the night within my house. As the door swung shut behind me loudly, I noticed slumped over body on our refined, wooden table. A mug of liquids sat faithfully by his large arm, it's contents swirling around the cup as if somebody had just moved it.

As I approached the seemingly motionless figure, my eyes grew accustomed to the candlelight around me. I squinted hesitantly at him, which sent a couple of remaining tears sprouting out from under my bottom eyelids. "Dad?" I asked quietly as I loomed closer.

The large shoulders rolled in the man's sockets as he attempted to stretch. He drew his heavy head off of the polished wood and looked sleepily towards me. He moved one of his arms and spilled the heavy mug's contents all over the table. He turned to look at the mess he had made and made an agitated grunt. His face was revealed in the languid light. It was my father and he seemed worried and confused. It glittered in his eyes. His attention turned gradually towards me as he hastily murmured, "Nice to have you back home, Frida. I was quite worried."

As he and I mopped up the watery mess on the table, my father recited everything he had been told several minutes before. It wasn't good news at all and it certainly didn't cheer me up from the previous.. Adventure. The tone in the air frightened me most; it reminded me of the time my father and sorrowfully told me that my mother had passed away.

"Frida," he said as he paused. His voice was full of concern and it frightened me at the time, "I've.. WE'VE been alerted of something that is of concern to you." I focused blankly towards the table as I answered calmly, "We?" My father nodded from behind me. "Everyone in the village." I faked a grin, even though I felt like I was going to fall apart. "Oh, really? Must be some news."

"...I've been told that.. we're going to be war very soon." I was about to say something along the lines of, 'Well, isn't that obvious?' but that wouldn't help change the serious atmosphere, so I let my father continue. "Hiccup said he had planned on telling us later on, but he was.. disrupted this evening by the leader of the people we are fighting against: The Knights... Are you listening, Frida? This is a dangerous situation we're in; Toothless could've been killed in the calamity tonight."

"Toothless? ...Killed?" I whispered to myself as I wiped away the last few remaining droplets of water on the table. My father didn't hear me, or he pretended not to hear me because he continued reambling, "Hiccup was given two choices: save Toothless and give us away to war, or protect the village and end the war. He chose to save Toothless. We should have known, Toothless is his best friend. He's never been so.. close to anyone in his life before." I shivered as my thoughts turned frightening and violent as I tried to imagine what the leader must've done to Toothless to make Hiccup think that way. My father's grave voice droned on in the background.

"We.. We have exactly one day before they arrive and attack. They gave us the privilege of knowing when they are going to attack us. Everyone is going to pitch in; even the Viking bakers are helping with supplying food and fighting for Berk's once claimed peacefulness. We have no idea what these people are like or what their.. tactics are like. All we know is that they are terrible people. We don't want them here on Berk. We're defending ourselves."

I bit down on my lip and hot tears ran down my cheeks at those horrible words. I wanted to scream at him, prove him wrong. Lucan, the Knight was possibly the nicest, most down-to-earth person I knew. How dare he call him that! My teeth dug viciously into my skin, preventing myself from yelling out. My father ignored my tears.

"You, along with everybody else in your class, have been instructed to join with every other dragon rider in Berk. Hiccup's orders.. Everyone has been informed of the subject. Everyone one else was told to.. Well, you don't need to hear about that for now, right?" He grinned sadly towards me, his face glowing quietly in the flickering candles. "He told us that he would send someone to get you in the morning to wake you. He said that you guys needed every last minute training that you could possibly get. That could be any moment by now, so I suggest you to get as much sleep as you can."

I did better than to object.

I woke about two or three hours after my father and I had talked. The throbbing in my head had faded, but I felt like I was going to collapse. My legs trembled violently as I was waken two or three hours later. My father was shouting my name from downstairs. I stumbled groggily out of bed and changed into light, comfortable clothes and crammed my quivering feet into my balmy, furry boots. I rubbed my tender, raw eyes and staggered down the stairs. I half near broke my neck when I nearly tumbled down the stairs due to my wobbling, un-sturdy legs and feet.

I was astonished to see my father sitting at the table, crouched over something he was making. He was exactly where I had left him two hours ago and it looked like he hadn't moved a single inch! I gawked and him before I opened the door, walking out without saying a single farewell.

"Hey," a figure whispered through the darkness. "You're tired, I know. I am too; we all are. We all will be until we get this thing involving the Knights over and dealt with." The voice was a little husky, but it was blatantly female. "Who," I stammered, "If I may ask, who are you?" My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and I saw a sly smile enter through the night. "I'm Astrid, one of Hiccup's.. companion, you could say. I will also be your person trainer for today."

The sound of excited, thick squeals cracked through the chilly, early morning air. I could hear something hefty running towards us and large toenails scraping carelessly against the mushy ground. I grinned when I realized who was coming: Aroth. He sprinted towards me with his blue wings outstretched and shoved his large muzzle into my face. His golden-flecked eye stared down Astrid as I wrapped my arms around his warm, scratchy scales.

It wasn't until Astrid had jumped up onto something really tall that I noticed that her Deadly Nadder had been standing silently behind her this whole time. "Come on," Astrid said unhappily down towards my direction, "Get on your dragon, you're wasting the darkness time. You're going to be flying in the dark, so we better start practicing while we can."

And before I knew it, I was on Aroth's protective back (right between his monstrous wings), and we were beginning our ascent into the starry, gloomy sky. 


	26. Chapter TwentySix: Trust

Icy tears built up in my eyes as Astrid began to increase our dragon's speeds. The ocean's raging, black waves roared below us, but we glided so quickly past them that they had merely turned to blurs in our eyes. I could no longer make out their distinct shape because they had all mended into one big abyss of darkness. It looked like a giant pit just waiting to swallow me.

The wind shrieked so deafeningly that I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear the sound of Aroth's wings beating vigorously against the howling air, his panting huffs and puffs, or even Astrid's commands ahead of me. I felt deaf and blinded by the darkness, I felt afraid and anxious. It was a feeling I hadn't really experienced before; fear and excitement combined. While trying to will away the thought, Astrid had been trying her best to yell above all of the noise.

"Hey!" She shouted as she twisted around in her dragon's saddle, "We're pretty far from Berk now! Nothing but ocean out here! This is where we will be training!" I gave no reply. She decided to call out again, "Frida! Can you hear me?" Still no reply. Astrid rolled her eyes and swiveled back to a normal flight stance. Her hands hastily gripped the edge of the brown leather saddle and held on as tightly as she could.

"Here we go," Astrid whispered to her own sapphire Deadly Nadder. She patted his coarse scales as she slightly stood in her saddle. She was implying that she wanted her Nadder to dive towards the bitter depths below. The dragon did as commanded, falling towards the crashing, dingy waves.

Aroth's golden eyes caught a glimpse of the sudden movement ahead of him and did nothing more than follow. He rolled in the air with his spikey nose pointed directly towards the depths underneath us. My stomach felt as though it were going flip-flops within my belly as we made our way towards the water. I held onto Aroth's brown saddle for dear life, fearing that I might decline to certain death if I hadn't.

Astrid certainly had my attention now. She had pulled up in the saddle just seconds before she could collide into the splashing water. Her dragon 'put on the breaks' by outstretching his wings to their full extent, catching the wind like a parachute and slowing their fall. It wasn't long until she was joined by Aroth and I.

Though Aroth was rather smart, he still hadn't learned that if you drop into water, you become automatically drenched. As he and I dove towards the waves at an alarming rate, he somehow decided that a quick dip might be nice. Instead of stretching out his wings like I was telling him to, he soared straight into the ocean. It was only a moment of frozen paralysis until Aroth changed his position and rocketed out of the water, water spraying out in every direction possible.

I felt as though I was frozen when he hovered over the water. We were at a stand-still, staring across at the dim outline of Astrid and her dragon. She was laughing. I could hear her better down here, the wind had died down as I neared the water. And I could hear her laughing. My face grew warm with embarrassment as I shivered in my dripping seat.

"Sorry," Astrid blurted between giggles, "I thought that your dragon was NOT going to dive straight into the water." That only caused her to snicker more. I sighed and looked away as I looked down at my nice fur coat. It was ruined, completely wet with bitter salt water.

I allowed my temporary instructor to calm down before explaining what we were going to do. "As I said earlier," she shouted, "This is our training ground; Ocean. You're more than likely going to be fighting over the water, since everyone is going to be defending Berk in different terrain." I bit the corner of my lip before replying, "So I get the watery death?" Astrid and I giggled before she answered, "Yeah. Anton gets a village-y death, Christian gets a mountain-y death, and Kirsten gets a rock-y death." "Hypothetically speaking, I hope," I grinned nervously.

"But," I asked with a thoughtful expression on my face, "Why the ocean for me?" Astrid nodded and began to explain. "Well, we picked out who's dragon would be best where. See, if Firroth was sent out to defend the beach and ocean, and something went wrong.. He would die as soon as he would hit the water. But Deadly Nadders are.. more resistant to water. Just like you experienced before, Aroth can swim and survive water longer than anyone else can."

"Don't remind me," I grumbled through chattering teeth, throwing my arms over each other for more warmth. Astrid ignored me and continued, "Viper, Christian's dragon, is able to twist himself around in dense areas. He has quick vision and can understand when things are coming up and.. change his flight pattern. Though Aroth is a Deadly Nadder, which are very good fliers when it comes to things like mountains, he's rather clumsy. If two or three knights on dragons were chasing you through the mountains, he'd probably end up running straight into a boulder and knock himself out. And then you.. would be dead meat."

"I get it," I said when I had enough of her babbling. "So, does this mean I will be flying alone?" "Of course not!" Astrid countered, "We've selected two or three other experienced dragon riders to help all four of you out. They've all been selected by their dragons in previous Dragon Days, so we've got nothing to worry about." I grimaced. All of the dragon riders were helping us? "What about Hiccup?" I blurted, but I immediately wished I hadn't afterwards. Astrid sighed and remained silent for a minute or two. "All of us.. Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs, and I.. we're going to.. to.. work alongside Hiccup. He's kindly requested that we don't, but.. how can we? He wants his fame and glory for defeating the lord of Knights, but.. we've heard all of his stories. We know how strong the Knight will likely be."

Astrid eyed me after she was done speaking, but I refused to say anything back. What would I say, anyways? Oh, well I hope you have a fun time trying to help Hiccup! No, I most certainly WOULDN'T say ANYTHING along those lines. It was a terrible way to say 'Hope you're happy when you're dead!' Lucan had said something about the Knights being strong and competitive... This wasn't going to be an easy fight. I felt like crying.

"Trust," Astrid murmured, rudely interrupting my thoughts. "Everyone's relying on us.. the dragon riders of Berk to protect everyone. But, who knows what'll happen of us? We're going to be the Knight's first and main targets, we're going to be huge bull's eyes to them. If our dragon is injured or even killed, where will we end up?" She continued with sadness gleaming through her eyes in the dim moonlight, "That's where trust plays it's biggest role. If we can't trust our dragons to protect us, we're going to lose to those.. Knights.. People are depending on US to fight off the men in shining armor, but really.. they should be depending on our dragons. They're doing all of the work."

She went silent for a minute or two. I found the sound of rolling waves comforting in this situation, though I knew that I had grown very accustomed to it when I was living on Berk. But out in the middle of it... the sound was magnificent. But Astrid broke the sound when she looked up at me. I could tell she was nearly in tears by that time.

"Don't... Don't lose trust in Aroth, okay? People are going to die today.. a lot of people. We weren't prepared. It's up to him to defend as many people as he can. You may be the last girl standing, but don't lose trust. You may be falling to your death, twisting and turning as the smell of your dragon's burning flesh enters your sense of smell.. but please.. don't. Trust is the most important thing you can have with your dragon. If you lose it, you've.. l-lost y-yourself.."

I never forgot those words, even long after that talk. 


	27. Chapter TwentySeven: Fire and Flight

"Okay!" Astrid called across at me after sitting in silence for so long, "Shall we start?" I bit the corner of my lip as I lightly pressed a hand against Aroth's thick, scaley neck. I bobbed my head up and down in silent reply, shifting slightly in my seat as I changed into a more comfortable and less akward feeling position. My back slumped lazily and my muscles relaxed as I peered down at the black, oily-looking water.

Astrid nodded in response before curling her fingers around the bay saddle she sat upon. Without saying anything, she clicked the very edge of her heel against her Deadly Nadder's sides. The dragon snorted and opened it's mouth, forming a rather large fireball between it's massive jaws. It's eyes followed the point of her finger and shot the fireball at the water's surface just meters away from where Aroth and I were.

The ball of fire landed in the water like a cannonball, producing a loud 'thunk' noise. Which caught me off guard, considering I was staring down at the water. I shot straight up in my seat and stared wearily towards the enormus splashing disturbance. I could hear Astrid laughing at my startled reaction. "You're supposed to be paying attention," she informed me.

"I know," I lied as my cheeks grew warm, "I was." "Oh," Astrid stopped laughing, "Really? Then tell your dragon to do precisely what I did right now." Because I hadn't really been watching, I tried my best to look like I had actually been listening. I poked a large scale on the back of Aroth's head and when he twisted his neck around to look at me with his golden, glowing eye. I grinned nervously at him. "Fireball," I told him. He blinked his eyes at me dumbly and it wasn't long until he was bored and looked away. Had I forgotten that dragons didnt understand most English?

Astrid sighed and shook her head. "No, you're doing it wrong." She muttered unhappily. "You better listen up if you want to survive this war. If not, you can continue day dreaming. Your choice." I murmered, "Sorry, ma'am," under my breath before Astrid proceeded to show me how it's done.

She showed me a patch of scales on Aroth's tan belly that I was supposed to poke with the heel of my foot. There was a certain vein in an area directly below the wings that stimulated the amount of 'juice' that was put into making fireballs. So if I poked it, it was alert the dragon that it would need to conjure up one of it's deadly fires. It's hard to explain..

Then she showed me how to get Aroth to blast the fire wherever I wanted. This was the tricky part, considering it takes a maximum of 2 or 3 seconds for a ball of fire to be formed in a dragon's mouth. You have to really think fast, which is hard, Astrid told me, when you're flying at top speed through the open air.

Our final test of firing fireballs was flying through the darkness, at full speed, and being chased. Aroth was rather happy to be leaving the water, because when I tugged upwards on his bulky saddle, he bulleted up as high into the sky as he could. Astrid was no where to be seen when the miniature test began. She told me she would be somewhere in the premises, somewhere completely random. Because that's what was going to happen during the fight.  
My vision was limited. On a dusky night like this, it was hard for your eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. I could see as far out as Aroth's head, but that was it. He and I sat there in complete silence as I strained to hear even the slightest noise. Dragons make a lot of noise when they fly; their wings break through wind and their breaths can be labored.

And then something happened. Out of the corner of my eyes, I spotted a shadow coming at me at an alarming speed. "Go!" I whispered fiercely to Aroth. I tugged violently in my seat and my Deadly Nadder started to pick up his pace. Astrid was right on our tail, so I urged him to move quicker.

When I looked over my shoulder again, the shadow seemed to vanish. I tugged on Aroth's saddle again, which slowed him down to a stop. When I looked forward, Astrid and her Nadder were rushing at us. I pushed down in my seat and Aroth dove down towards the water again. Just before striking the waves, I stood up in my seat and pulled back. My dragon changed from pointing downwards to pointing directly upwards. That's when I decided to make my move.

I pushed my heel against the vein under his wing and pointed up towards the oncoming shadow. The orange ball of flames shot out at Astrid. I pulled Aroth back into a normal stalled position and watched as Astrid steered her dragon towards again.

She held a burning shield in her hand and examined before we made eye contact. "Not bad," she said as she tossed the piece of charcoaled wood into the water-y depths. "But," she continued, "If you continue forcing Aroth to go full speed all of the time, he's going to get tired very tired. A tired dragon for something like this is not good at all, so.. slow him down a little. If anything, only fly him at full speed when needed." I nodded as I pushed back a brown strand of hair from my face.

"Steering," Astrid chirped. "Every good dragon rider needs to really know how to steer." I was about to say something along the lines of 'But I already know how to steer,' but that wouldn't be very respectful. My instructor began to critique me. "First of all, stop flailing and pulling around in that saddle. If you keep that up, the leather bands  
connecting the saddle to your dragon aren't going to last very long."

"You're flying Aroth in a way that could hurt him. If you push down too hard on the saddle, you just hurt his back. You have to understand, Aroth will still get the message if you tone down the amount of force put into your steering." She glanced towards me.

And so, I was forced to steer more easily and fluidly. It was a hard to change my ways, considering Hiccup hadn't really said anything to me about my steering. I thought what I had been doing was correct. I guess I wasn't. Aroth seemed to enjoy me not struggling about in my saddle as much. I could tell by the way he flew quicklier than normal.

By the time we had finished perfecting my steering and saddle-handling, the sun was poking up through the edge of the ocean. Things were getting brighter in the area, and I could see the once black waves turn a magnificent shade of orange. I could see the slim outline of Berk on the opposite edge of the ocean.

I turned around in my seat towards Astrid. "Is this really how far I'll be during the fight?" Astrid shook her head from side to side, "Nah, unless somebody chases you this far out. You'll be much closer to the beach; closer to the land just in case you or Aroth are seriously injured and in need of help."


	28. Chapter TwentyEight: Coming Back Around

As the sun rose in the morning sky, the air surrounding our training grounds grew increasingly humid and stuffy. There was a thin sweat gathering on my forehead and nose by the time we were idling our dragons. I felt Aroth's sides puffing in an out as he took in heavy, laboured breaths. His heavy head drooped on his outstretched neck and it seemed to pain him every time he raised his wings.

Despite how exhausted Aroth appeared, Astrid and her Nadder seemed to be as lively as ever. There was barely a bead of sweat on her pale forehead or a droop in her dragon's wings. She was gazing calmly at the twinkling, ocean waves, not even thinking to look at how tired my poor dragon seemed.

"Astrid," I coughed quietly above the symmetrical roar of waves. I had to repeat myself until her head turned to inspect what I was complaining about. "What?" She asked in a snotty tone, her nose slightly wrinkling with distaste. I patted Aroth's scale neck with the soft part of my fingertips.

We headed back to Berk within a couple of minutes after I had pointed out Aroth's exhaustion. It took us a little more time to get back because of Aroth. He didn't want to continue flying, he wanted to collapse where he was and take a nap or eat something delicious.. for a dragon, anyways. I couldn't blame him. Dark circles lined my drooping eyes and my body longed for my bed and pillow.

When we finally arrived on Berk's sandy beaches, Aroth seemed to get more lively. He sped up his slackened pace even when I hadn't told him to, racing past Astrid, and nose-dove down towards our landing site. He was the first to land on the beach, collapsing as soon as he made contact with the ground. I was thrown from my saddle, landing in a heap a few feet away from the messy landing.

I managed to remain unharmed when I had crashed to the ground. By the time that Astrid had landed, I has moved into a sitting position. My eye was on Aroth, whom was curled up into a tight, Terrible Terror-like ball. His scales were covered with the white sand.

Astrid jumped down off of her dragon and approached me with a smile plastered upon her lips. "Looks like somebody was tired." I nodded sleepily, not really hearing what she was talking about at all. "Mmhmm," I mumbled as I drew incomprehendible scribbles into the sand surrounding me. My stomach growled, my eyes drooped even lower. It was as if all of my energy has been sucked out of me.

I pulled all of the furs off of me, leaving me sit in the warm, moist air without being too overheated. I layed back into the beach and stared sleepily at the cloud-dotted sky. I hadn't noticed the fact that Astrid had left my side to retrieve something until I smelt the thick essence of freshly cooked turkey legs.

I sat up just as Astrid lowered herself to sit right next to me. She grinned at me, handing my a juicy looking leg as she gladly dug into hers. I looked over at Aroth, who was still laying down, but happily nibbling on something Astrid had given him. I smiled at him and bit into the crisp outer layer of lovely, white meat.

The meal seemed to perk me up a bit because I hadn't felt so tired when my stomach was full. I managed to stand and wobbled over towards Aroth, who also seemed more excited and lively. He barked like a little puppy at my prescence, his huge muzzle pressed into my face. His warm breath engulfed me like an embrace. I couldn't help but curl my arms around his huge jaws, my fingers lightly pressed against the line of his jaw bone.

"Well," Astrid laughed a few feet away as she stood at the base of her Deadly Nadder's legs. "Sorry I have to break the love-y party and all, but we have training to do." I looked at Aroth and his golden eye looked back. I whispered, my lips curling into a slight grin, "Ready to go again, buddy?" His head bobbed up and down on his neck as he rose to his two, massive feet.

I pulled myself up onto the saddle placed cleverly between Aroth's wings. I watched the powerful muscles in Aroth's neck move as he twisted around to look at his surroundings. When Astrid's dragon came stomping up to us, my instructor spoke.

Aroth and I trained as hard as we could for all of our various sessions. We did water diving, which made the both of us soaked through to the bone. We did falling, calling, and land safety. We did steering around the enclosed, rocky area on the very boundaries of Berk.

But, as the day grew on us, the more anxious I got. I had butterflies in the pit of my stomach and I kept thinking about the war we were going to fight. I guess in a way, I kept on imagining the worst. What if I were killed? What would Aroth do without me? Would be able to survive on his own? What would Hiccup do with him if he had no rider, set him free? Would he like to be free more than being kept as some sort of pet?

All of those questions shot through my head as the sun got lower and lower to the ocean's horizon. The lower it got, the more I began to get upset. I didn't want Aroth to die. I didn't want myself to die. What if Berk lost the war? My heart raced in my chest cavity when Astrid and I did the last session of the day: war training.

Astrid flew back to Berk, leaving Aroth and I circling around it's boundaries. I had no idea when Astrid was going to come and attack, but she had told me to fly around Berk. We were going to actually fight, dragons and all. We were pretending to be enemies.

Her Deadly Nadder came out of nowhere as quickly as a bullet. It snarled and hissed as it tried to wrap it's sharp, long teeth around Aroth. If Aroth hadn't avoided the attack out of reflex, he may have been bit. I pressed the tip of my foot to where the fire nerve was and steered my dragon around to fire it at Astrid. But she had disappeared.

The dragon's scream emanated from below where Aroth and I were. "Move!" I cried and lurched forward in my saddle, sending Aroth dashing out towards sea. Astrid was hot on our heels. I instructed my Nadder to dive towards the water to throw her off. When we had fallen several yards, I turned Aroth so that his nose was pointed up at the sky. The other Nadder was there, zooming through the sky.

Aroth fired a fireball at Astrid, which only caught a little bit of the dragon's tail. It yelped in a panicked tone and turned back around to face us. It charged at us at an alarming speed. Aroth and I cut through the sky, away from the oncoming instructor. When we were a decent amount of space apart, I slowed my dragon so that Astrid could catch up.

Soon, we were flying in sync. I glanced at Astrid with a smirk on my face before I slowly rose to a stand in my saddle. I took a huge breath and leaped. I managed to land on her Nadder's back, behind Astrid. I eased myself behind her and held my flat hand against her throat, signifying death. I won.

I sat back down on Aroth's back before my instructor and I looked at the sun, which was slowly dipping below the horizon. We looked nervously at each other and it wasn't long before we began flying to our village, where everyone was gathering. The war was going to be soon. In an hour or two and nothing less.

Time to say goodbye to everyone we loved and rest before our lives became a living hell.


	29. Chapter TwentyNine: Goodbye

The streets of Berk were bustling with jittering people when I arrived. Everyone seemed to be going someplace, disappearing into the dark depths of a building or running out of sight. Blacksmiths were carrying armfuls of painfully heavy looking weapontry from place to place, bakers were either caught in weapon training or baking enough food for everyone. Weapon masters were sprinting towards the forest for target practice. Every single Berk-ian was up and about and they wouldn't rest until they knew they were going to be safe.

I looked up at Aroth as we stood side by side on our village's outskirts. By then, Astrid had left us to go prepare herself. We were all alone, accompanied by the frenzic pandemonium emanating from the civilization in front of us. My heart thumped violently in my chest and I felt as though I couldn't breathe. The air seemed to thin and tighten around me in an unfamiliar embrace.

I couldn't help but think about many things as my dragon and I stood on that little slope overlooking our village. I thought about my childhood playing with little Nora, I thought about Hiccup and what he was probably feeling. I thought about Aroth and how our lives were on stake. And finally, I thought about Lucan. I wondered what had happened of him, where he was. Oh, how I wished he was okay!

Aroth seemed to feel the tension in the air and barked to catch my attention. When I turned to face him, his golden eye was right in front of my face. He waved his head in the air, signifying that he wanted to leave. My fingers brushed up against his blue scales as I nodded and began to stride towards the bustling village. I don't recall if he had flown off or just walked away, but he wasn't with me as I pushed against the zipping crowd.

I was bounced and pounded up against everyone. Everyone had sweat on their faces, despite the normal temperature. They all looked exhausted, tired, and worried. Some of them even had puffy, red eyes and cheeks. Crying.

It took me a while to get to my house. I had knowingly walked by it several times in a row, but I just couldn't pass over. Mobs of people came from behind, in front, or at my sides, preventing me from getting into my house. After four or five exhausting tries, I managed to wriggle through the mob and into the doorway of my house. Upon entering, I was greeted to the familiar smell of burning wood and warm temperatures. I trailed into my father's work space where I found him working furiously on a big-bladed axe.

He didn't notice me until I stepped more into the room. And more. And more. I was standing by the burning coals that he was working over and he still didn't notice me. I cleared my throat, making sure that I was louder than the deafening pounding of metal. I stepped behind him and wrapped my arms around his thick, sweaty neck. "Dad," I shouted into his ear. I let go when he began to turn towards me and put down his work.

He stared at me with tired eyes. "Frida," he whispered. "Why aren't you training?" I bit the corner of my lip and looked away, "I'm done, dad. Astrid gave me less than an hour to say goodbye.. Besides, Aroth needs some rest, too. He can't fly indefinitely." "Oh," he replied cooly, "I'm kind of busy, sweetie. But I guess I can stop for just a few minutes. Just in case I never see you again."  
Those words made me shudder. I didn't like the idea of either of us dying at the bloody hands of Knights. Maybe just the idea of dying didn't sound appealing. I didn't want anyone to die, no matter if they were a Knight or a Viking. But of course, some people were going to. That's just what happens during war. What worried me the most was that anyone could be killed. Father, Aroth, Kirsten, Anton... Anyone. Death frightened me.

We spoke quietly for as long as we could. He told me how he was so proud of me, how he wanted me to know how he was rooting for me. How much he loved me. How much he thought I was like my mother; brave. How much my mother probably missed me. How my mother was looking down at us at the time. It made my heart burn with sorrow. I wanted to cry, but my father was the one who ended up in tears.

When the sharp, high-pitched noise of the alarm bell went off, he wrapped me up in his strong arms. When he let go, he pushed at my back. "Go," he sniffled. When I didn't move, he screamed, "GO! You have a village to protect!" I looked at the depressing, unfinished axe sitting by his side before running out of the door without saying a single word.

At the sound of the alarm, the war bell that reminded everyone that we had merely 5 or 10 minutes left to get ready and in position, everyone was moving faster than they had before. It seemed like millions of people were pouring rapidly out of every open doorway. Everyone rushed towards their designated places along Berk's narrow streets, boundaries, forests, and bridges. Nintey-nine percent of them were carrying heavy, metallic weapons.

I looked at the sky as I sprinted towards an empty area of grass where I could find Aroth. It was a brilliant shade of dark blue, stars twinkling unknowingly in the distance. The moon hovered in the night sky, giving me enough light to see where I was going. I thought I saw the shadowing outline of a dragon zoom through the night sky, but I dismissed the idea as soon as I reached the field.

Everyone else was there. Christian with Viper, Kirsten with Chomper.. Anton with Firroth. Aroth stomped up to me as soon as I entered the area. I patted his narrow nose and jogged up to all of my fellow dragon riders. Everyone looked nervous and antsy. But as I arrived, everyone piled around me in a fit of hugs and sobs. We all ended up crying without any of us saying anything. I didn't know about everyone else, but I felt very much like a baby afterwards.

We didn't say anything, even when we jumped up onto our saddles. We all exchanged sad, worried smiles before we flew off towards our different destinations. We all knew one thing: out fate was going to be coming within a very short amount of time.


	30. Chapter Thirty: The War Begins

Silence grew upon Berk. It was so quiet that if somebody had dropped a pin, you might've been able to hear it on the other side of our island. We all held our breaths in anticipation, our eyes glued to the beautifully colored sky, searching for any glimpse of our oncoming enemies. Many people later said it was hard to even look at the person standing right next to them, fearing that they wouldn't see them alive again. I have to say, the silence scared me more than knowing my fellow villagers were going to die soon.

The sharp shriek of the war bells rung through the sky within several minutes. Somebody had spotted a Knight, and whether it was by foot, boat, or dragon, none of us knew. Aroth's feet stamped quietly at the ground, his head flicking this way and that in fear. I hadn't realized that he was trying to tell me something; he was trying to imply that the Knights were very, very near.

Four or five boats filled with the men and women in silvery outfits had slipped through the water, just meters away from where Aroth and I were camped out. I hadn't seen them because they hadn't any light or lamp on the boats. They had crashed into the banks and beaches surrounding our village with a huge amount of ruckus. Everyone of Berk stood tall, but afraid as they waited for all of the Knights to crawl our of their grimy boats and try to 'make the first move.'

The war began with the gutteral clashes and screams as two different civilizations literally started killing each other. To add to the horrifying noise, the opposing dragons screamed in the distance as they rocketed towards Berk in a huge cloud. Their riders whooped and howled like animals as they grew nearer and nearer. Pretty soon, they were so close that I could tell what dragon species that they had.

The majority of their dragons were Monstrous Nightmares, which are considered the most aggressive and unafraid dragon, and Zipplebacks, which I figured were used mainly for intimidation purposes, seeing that they're the biggest. Though, I could count numerous Gronkles and Nadders, too. And from what I could see, they had several Night Fury out there. Several. We only had one, Toothless.

I waited until the last moment before I let Aroth take off. By then, the majority of the dragons had started attacking, firing enormus fires at our poor village. Though from what I could see, the Vikings on the ground seemed to be winning over the Knights on the ground. But with all of those dragons destroying everything that they could, those people wouldn't stand a chance!

I saw Anton and the other dragon riders cut through all of the flames and attack all of the Knight's dragons that they could. I watched as Firroth pounced upon the spindly necks of a Zippleback, biting down as hard as he could. I looked away, gazing around my surrounding area. Why weren't there any Knights out on the outskirts?

I had spoke too soon. It was only a couple seconds after I had thought that question, several Knights upon dragons, a group of 6 or 7, came barreling at me. I held my breath and tapped the Fire Nerve right below the scaley base of Aroth's mighty wings. He shot a flaming shot straight at one of the Knights, crashing right into the side of one of the dragons. The Knight was thrown furiously off of the back of his dragon, a fat Gronkle, as it jerked back and ended up falling to the watery waves below, too.

The other Knights stared as one of their comrades met his death. They halted their dragons and looked at the oil-colored waves before directing their attention towards me. One of them, the Knight at the front, muttered something to the riders behind him. In a matter of a milisecond, they all nodded and began barreling towards me with their dragons at full speed. They were going to avenge the Gronkle rider right there and then.

I didn't even have to flinch in my saddle, Aroth took off in the other direction. He howled unhappily, flapping his wings furiously against the strong, night breeze. Behind us, I could hear the other dragons. They were coming closer, and just running away wouldn't be getting us any further away from them. Leaning back in my saddle, Aroth changed positions and flew higher up into the sky, the tip of his tail pointing directly down at the crashing waves.

The Knights flew beneth us, but quickly changed their flight patterns, too. They were flying up, too, continuing to chase us. A Monstrous Nightmare blasted a fireball at us, blowing right past us by just a little inch. It singed the tip of Aroth's wing, but didn't cause any major damage or burns.

"Looks like they aren't going to leave us alone," I mumbled to my Deadly Nadder. I slowed him down, thinking about the words that Astrid had spoken during or training. It wasn't long before the Knights had caught up with me. Two of them flew in sync with Aroth, flying closer and closer to his scaley sides. I could see the Knights' faces, covered with the metallic masks, staring at me. I could hear them snicker as another dragon pulled up in front of Aroth, one behind. I was trapped.

Just then, one dragon rider that was protecting the outskirts of Berk, too, came flying into view. It was a boy with sandy, blonde hair, blue eyes, and who looked about 20 or 21 years old. His blue eyes glanced at me just before his dragon, a Zippleback, began to bite and chop down on the other dragons surrounding me. One of the Knights screamed something at him over the screams of their dragons. The Berkian dragon just continued biting and sending small fireballs at the Knights until they flew away; the cowards!

"Thanks," I murmured to the blonde dragon rider just before he pulled away from where I had been trapped. "You owe me," he growled, his eyes narrowing angrily at me just as he escaped, "Oh, and watch where you go and who you mess with, kid. Never know what's going to happen to you or who you run into. Not everybody's going to save you, you know."


	31. Chapter ThirtyOne: Oceanic Death

I closed my eyes as Aroth came to a stop thousands of feet above the ground. My muscles, which had been clenched up and tightened, began to relax from the stressful moment beforehand. I opened my tired eyes and looked at Aroth's blue neck and saw that it was straining, too. I instinctively leaned forward in my leather saddle and pressed a calming palm to his rough skin. "Hey," I whispered, "It's okay, Aroth." He snorted unhappily, twisting his head from side to side in an apparent sign of distress.

I sighed as Aroth began flying back down towards the oily waves, continuing our long circles around Berk. I kept my eyes glued to our big island, whether I could see our village or not, and stared at the fires. They were everywhere, the fires. In the forest, in the mountaintops.. anywhere that one of my friends was risking his or her life. My eyes burned with warm, salty tears the more I thought about the war. I blinked the tears away and faced forward again, looking at the dark emptiness ahead of me. Not even the stars dared to twinkle in the sky that day.

Aroth's angry scream broke my thoughts into peices. He surged and yanked forward, huffing and growling in the back of his throat. He increased his flight speed, rocketing straight towards a shadow that he must've seen. He let out a shrieking hiss as the shadow emerged into the moonlight, revealing the figure as another Knight. This one was on the back of a purple-marked Monstrous Nightmare. I could hear the enemy's stupid snickers echoe around in his shining armor. The metal on his body gleamed and twinkled in the light.

The Monstrous Nightmare, who had been stalling mid-flight, charged at us, following it's rider's orders. Aroth screamed again, throwing out his multicolored, beautiful wings to slow down and change directions. I tried to make him continue his rampage forward in attempt to hold our ground (...or well, sky for that matter), but he wouldn't listen. He turned around and flew in the opposite way.

I flailed unhappily in my seat, screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" to the wind. I yanked and tugged at my saddle in attempt to make him listen to me. But he wouldn't, that adamant creature! He continued sailing away from the enemy like a puppy with a tail in between it's legs. Aroth roared in a furious response to all of the racket I was making at the time.

He seemed to know what he was doing, because just as the Monstrous Nightmare rider had begun to grow tired of chasing a lost cause, Aroth bounced up into the air and turned back around to face the Knight. He opened his jaws and raced forward, not allowing either of the duo to react before he was upon them. He aimed straight for the Nightmare's neck with open, ferocious jaws and clamped down. He twisted the neck around in his shark-like jaws, waiting for the deadly crack that proved that the enemy was dead. My Deadly Nadder didn't even take notice of the Knight, who had drawn a longsword from it's hold along the Knight's waist.

The Knight gripped the longsword in one hand and curled his arms and legs around his thrashing Monstrous Nightmare's scaley sides before he began to creep closer and closer to Aroth's massive head. Pretty soon, he was a close enough to be able to do some damage to my dragon. "Aroth!" I screamed from where I was stationed in his saddle, "LOOK!" His golden eye stared at the Knight, his nose completely flared in anger. He spotted the sword in his hands and his pupils narrowed into the thinnest slits possible.

He growled, his jaws still clamped around the half-alive dragon's neck, and hissed under his labored huffs. The Knight didn't hesitate to raise the sword and bring it down directly on Aroth's muzzle. There was a horrible tearing noise as the blade sliced through his thick scales. My Deadly Nadder jerked back, howling in frustration and surprise, and dropped the Nightmare's purple neck in less than a second.

The enemy's dragon made no attempt to try and fly. There were wounds where my dragon's teeth had sunk in that were pooling over with dark, murky liquids. It began falling limply to the sea, the rider's horrifying screams following as he flailed and tried to gain control of the dragon. I never forgot that scream.. it still haunts me to this day.

Aroth twisted his neck around to look at me and I saw the wound on the base of his jaw. It leeked with his blood, filling the air with the horrible stench of iron. He shook his head, looking down at the falling Knight, and without any sudden notice, he took off barreling towards them. He opened his jaws again and fired a single blast directly at the rider before he righted himself in flight and flew away from the mess.

My eyes widened with horror. My dragon.. actually killed somebody. I couldn't and wouldn't believe it. The burden seemed to pound down at my from all sides. I was responsible for somebody's death. Somebody that probably had a family out there that was going to mourn over their loss. Somebody that actually had a history. And a dragon, too. It couldn't believe it.

Shock sunk in for both Aroth and I. He stopped flying somewhere by the tall mountains on our island. He stalled in the air, staring blankly at nothing. It was our faults. It may have been necessary for our and Berk's survival, but was it really worth the burden afterwards? I felt so horrible.

Aroth and I were too busy wallowing in our sorrows to see that two of the Knights that had previously been attacking our village came bulleting straight towards us. They didn't know what had happened, but they didn't care. We were vulnerable, out in the open like that and they knew that they should never miss an opportunity like that.

The first Knight stationed himself in the shadows by Aroth's right side. The second continued flying hastily forward, knowing exactly what he was going to do. The dragon of the second Knight's jaws opened and fired a great fireball straight at Aroth's left side. We only saw it a few short seconds before it would've made the bloody impact. Aroth instantly leaped up, which caught me off guard and threw me off the saddle.

I didn't have any time to think before I was falling straight towards the oceanic waves below me. I struggled and flailed around as I fell, thinking only of the watery death that I knew would be happening in a matter of seconds. I looked up at Aroth, who was trying to fend off of the two Knight and save me at the same time. He tried to fly down to catch me, but he was stopped by the cleverly hidden first Knight.  
That's when I heard the Night Fury's scream and roar. The two Knights paused at the deafeningly loud noise, their masks flicking through out the sky in search of the dragon. They had no idea that the Night Fury was actually down by me. By then, I was just shy of my watery death by a few short meters.

The Night Fury sped towards me, it's teal eyes gleaming intently in the darkness, and caught me in it's large front paws. I couldn't recall seeing the beautiful dragon's rider as I dangled helplessly in it's grasp. I was pulled against it's scaley hide as it pointed upwards at the two other Knights. It opened it's black jaws and let out two blast of white fire towards them, which was enough to frighten them off.

"Hiccup?" I asked as the Night Fury continued flying up towards Aroth, who must've been sitting there looking confused. When the dragon's flight was leveled off, it flipped me up in the air and I landed on it's black back, right behind it's metal-covered rider. A Knight. I screamed.


	32. Chapter ThirtyTwo: The Life of the Party

"Shut up!" The Knight that was in front of me scolded. "Do you want to get us both _killed_?" My scream faded to horrified squeals as I tried to have my life flash before my eyes. That's what people thought happened just before you died, right? You saw everything that ever happened to you if your lifetime was coming to an end. So you can cherish your memories and those that you love for those last few moments instead of fearing your oncoming doom.

I didn't see those memories, it just didn't come. My head whirled around and my mind couldn't comprehend where the Night Fury or Knight were taking me. I couldn't even see Aroth, though I was sure that he was very nearby. Though in reality, the Knight was directing his dragon off to the safety of a cave and Aroth was barreling after us. He roared and yelped mournfully. He was the only thing I could hear. I would've opened my mouth to call for him, to command him to get rid of my two kidnappers, but I couldn't. My jaw was clentched painfully tight. I couldn't even unlock my arms from the Knight's waist. The drop had put me into shock.

There was a sudden sharp intake of breath from behind and I could see the fuzzy shape of the Knight's head turn frantically around to see what was going on. "NO! AROTH!" The Knight screamed. He flailed his only free hand in an attempt to stop my Deadly Nadder from blowing a fireball directly at him. "STOP!" He howled, but it was no use. Aroth was deadset on getting his rider, me, back. The green gas ignited in his mouth and the flaming ball came whizzing through the air at us.

The Night Fury sped directly downwards and spun like a top to avoid the fatal hit. "Hang on," the rider grunted back at me through obviously grit teeth. Wind spun around us and whipped my hair around my face. It felt like the Knight had lost all control on the beast, but our flight was hastily evened out when we were a good ways away from Aroth.

"T-That's my dragon," I managed to whimper in a daze. "I know," the Knight said calmly, "he'll follow us until he knows you're safe. That's just how dragons are. And he's going to keep on trying to kill me or my dragon until he knows you're safe, too. So I suggest to hang on tight until we land." The symptoms of my daze and shock seemed to wear off within a couple minutes after he finished telling me what to do, but I still felt a little bit more than groggy. I pulled my arms tighter around the Knight's waist and settled into the simple leather saddle. Comfy-ness helped make the scariness of the situation go away a little bit.

The Knight and I rode in complete silence, despite the sound of the wind that whistled in our ears and the noise my dragon was making from about a hundred feet behind us. When the Night Fury's wings and the fins on it's tail spread out as far as possible, I knew it was making it's descent downwards. My stomach flipped and flopped around inside of me as it dropped closer and closer to our landing site, a cave carved out of the side of the mountain top. As soon as we landed safely, the Knight broke away from my grasp, crawled off of the dragon's back, and offered a helping hand up towards me.

I refused his hand and slid down myself. My knees slightly trembled and my entire body shivered, even though I was wrapped up in a warm fur coat. I stared at the Knight through the slim slivers of moonlight that poured through the cave's opening. He was barely inside of the mouth of the cave with his silver face pointed directly up at the starry night, just.. staring at the sky. He was looking for something. He had his hands connected behind his back, like an old, wise professor.

I didn't dare ask what he was looking for, so I just watched the sky, too. It was lit up, here and there, with dragon's fire. It was a little like fireworks. There was even screaming, too. Screaming fireworks. Except it wasn't quite as pleasent. I looked away from the sky and moved my attention to the Night Fury that he had been riding. I stepped up to it and quickly moved back. It's teal eyes turned slitted as soon as I had approached it and it let out a menacing growl. It flashed me it's ivory teeth even after I had moved back.

"Draco," the Knight snapped gently. He hadn't even looked at the dragon and it drew silently. However, it's peircing gaze was still locked upon me. "That's it's name?" I asked aloud, still holding eye contact with the black dragon, "Draco?" The Knight was silent for a couple moments before I got a response. He nodded his head up an down, refusing to say a word. It was an awkward conversation.

"Move!" He howled in a matter of moments. There was a large, oncoming shadow, accompanied with a furious roar, that was swooping closer and closer to the mouth of the cave. The Knight and his Night Fury scrambled backwards into the deeper areas of the cave. I rushed back, too, because I had no idea that the shadow was only my dragon.

When he landed messily on the cave's ground. Aroth displayed his open wings and snarled. He opened his mouth to release another flaming ball directly at the man who had brought me there, but that was stopped short. I ran forward with my arms flailing, screaming, "Aroth! AROTH! Stop, it's okay! I'm safe, there's no need for this!" He lowered his head down towards me when I was only a few inches away from him and eyed me with his narrowed, yellow eye.

"It's okay," I panted. I raised a hand to gently stroke his snout reassuringly. He lowered his back towards me in a blatant gesture of wanting to ride again. He let out little, somewhat excited yips and waggled his spikey tail like a happy puppy. I was about ready to climb into his saddle when the Knight emerged.

"Unless you want to get yourself killed, then I suggest you stay in this cave. Besides," he added coolly, "they say this is the place that's going to be the life of the party." He stepped forward, Draco hot on his heels towards Aroth, with his hands up, trying to comfort the disgruntled dragon. "It's alright, Aroth," he mumbled and moved closer.

"How do you know his name?" I snapped. It had been one of the questions that had been floating around in my mind earlier, when I couldn't move. He didn't respond, he just politely stepped around my dragon and continued examining the sky. "C'mon," I said coldly and moved back in the cave to give the Knight some room. Aroth obidiently followed, though he did keep a nasty eye on the Night Fury.

"Who are you?" I asked. I pulled my arms over my chest as I slunk to the ground. I didn't really ask the question angrily or anything, but it really wasn't nice either. The Knight responded by continuing to give me the cold shoulder and not turning around to look at me. "You'll see in time," he said. I thought I could hear the slightest amount of pain or sorrow in his voice..

I didn't know what we were waiting for, or what he meant by 'the life of the party here', but I didn't really ask. I could plainly see the sheathed sword strapped upon the Knight's waist. I had nothing to defend myself if he decided to use it, so I thought it was better if I didn't do anything to frustrate him. Besides, I kind of owed him for saving my life.. So, we waited. And waited. And waited. It felt like an eternity before something actually started up.


	33. Chapter ThirtyThree: Showdown

"Get back!" The Knight bellowed boisterously, snapping my thoughts of nothing in particular in half. There was a sound of clanking metal as he began rushing back towards the shadows, where my dragon and I were standing. The Night Fury that had once been standing stationary and obediently behind his rider's head raised with his ears pulled up in alert. His pupils were slit in terror. Imagine that, a Night Fury scared!

The Knight brushed passed me and went even deeper into the cave. He didn't really seem to care that he soon wouldn't be able to see anything at all, he was just trying to run away from whatever he had seen. His Night Fury bounded hastily behind him, galloping at full speed with his wings tucked tightly to his side. Aroth snarled and threw a fit as the duo flew past us, but neither of them noticed.

Within a few short moments, they had disappeared back into the cave. I couldn't even see Draco's glowing eyes.. I couldn't hear their scampering feet. I figured they must have stopped running then because I couldn't hear anything other than water dripping down from the ceiling of the damp cave. Aroth and I kind of looked at each other, both in awe. What were we supposed to do? Maybe the Knight was just saw a shadow and thought that it was a rider coming for us.

Our thoughts were confirmed when something howled in the distance, whether it was a feral Knight or a dragon, I will never know. There was the scream of a Night Fury, presumably Toothless. I could make out three distinct reptilian shadows swoop towards the cave's mouth. It was obvious two of the shadows were corralling the third into the cave. Was this the 'party' that the Knight had been talking about?

I gasped and pushed my back into Aroth's leg. He stared down at me with a confused expression, his head tipped slightly to the side, before he finally understood what I was implying. He turned around and stepped silently through the darkness. I did nothing other than follow him.

It got to a point in a matter of seconds where I couldn't see my own hand when it was centimeters in front of my face. I had to clutch the clammy wall to know that I was going in the right direction. I had completely lost Aroth and I didn't know how far away from him I was. I felt as lonely as ever. I couldn't call out for him, fearing the people I had seen coming into the cave would hear me. And if they were Knights, probably dispose of me.

I stopped when I thought I had gone further enough. I pushed my back to the wall and slid to the almost slimy floor, pulling my legs to my chest and my arms around my legs. I peered through the darkness, hoping to see the riders, but only seeing darkness. I would've done anything for a torch at that moment.

My vision was obviously reduced, but I could still hear. I heard plenty of voices. From the sound of it, all male. I could hear dragons hissing. I could hear them fighting. It wasn't a pleasant thing to hear when you're all alone in the dark, not knowing whether or not I would ever see light again. Everything that I thought at that moment was blatant.

After I stated the obvious, I began to connect the voices to faces. The only one that I could identify was Hiccup. Toothless snarled and I immediately recognized him, too. I couldn't comprehend the other two voices. One was very deep and superior sounding, the other higher pitched and less important.

"Look at what you've done," the deep voice purred. "Your entire village is in flames. Lots of Vikings have died, Hiccup. There's no denying it. And it's all your fault. Shame, you've ruined families. Friends lost. Buildings that have been standing for centuries, wiped away by single dragons. Everyone will crown you as the worst village leader. That is, if everybody hasn't died. And who's to say that I'll let you live this one down?"

I couldn't hear Hiccup's voice for a few minutes and for a second I feared that this person, probably the Knight leader, had killed him. But he eventually spat in response, "Shut up!" I listened to the faint padding of feet as Hiccup's soft fur boots struck the ground. There was a grunt. Somebody had struck a punch to the other. The high-pitched one laughed. Toothless whimpered. Had they bound him? Why wasn't he reacting?

The opposite dragon hissed and leaped upon Hiccup. It pinned him down to keep him from moving. I heard Hiccup struggling against the dragon's weight. And that was when I couldn't handle it anymore. I stood up, being sure to be silent and crept my way through the darkness until I could see what was going on.

They had indeed bound Toothless up. There was a metal chain wrapped around his snout and all four of his feet were in shackles. He was laying on his side. His eyes were slit in fear and it looked as though he had given up. As if he knew that they were going to slaughter his rider in front of his green eyes. To him, everything was lost. And he couldn't do a single thing about it.

The dragon pinning Hiccup to the ground was a bright orange Monstrous Nightmare. One of the Knights, probably the leader's backup, remained mounted on his dragon, a dark brown Gronckle. The other was dismounted and watching his Monstrous Nightmare try to tear at Hiccup's skin from the opposite side of the dark cave.

Hiccup's arm was bloodied and there was a trickle of crimson sliding down from his eyebrow to his narrow jaw. His expression was pure terror, pain, and hurt. He looked like a deer than had been struck by an arrow; minutes from death, realizing everything was their fault.

I stood away from the main action, making sure that I wouldn't be seen. I was waiting for the perfect moment to strike, though I had no idea what I would do. Punch him? Yeah, because that would totally be fatal. No. I didn't know. Hot tears were building up in my eyes. Here, my village leader might die and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt a little more than helpless.

The Knights leader casually strolled up to Hiccup with his hands behind his back. His dragon paused to look at him, but immediately resumed holding the boy down. The Knight shook his metal-covered head and chuckled to himself. "Not giving up yet?" He asked cockily. Hiccup didn't respond, just struggled for the life of him.

The Knight's hand reached down for the sheathed long sword strapped to his side. He pulled it out and pointed it down towards our village leader. He took a breath to say something, but I bit down on my lip and emerged from the safety of the shadows. I screamed and hollered and flailed for him to stop. His head only turned to me, half bewildered and confused.

"Wha-" He began to say, but was cut off. A big shadow flew straight into the cave. The rider of the dragon screamed at the top of his lungs as he jumped off of his dragon's back mid-flight and pounced on the Knight's leader. The Knight's armor created a loud clatter as he struck the ground. The big dragon that I had seen enter pushed the Monstrous Nightmare off of Hiccup and it's two heads hissed menacingly. It managed to get the Monstrous Nightmare to the wall with it's intimidation. Two heads. A Zippleback.

"Christian!" Hiccup and I both screamed, but he was busy striking at the Knight's leader. The Knight had dropped his sword when Christian had pounced. The black-haired Viking had drawn his own, handmade pocketknife and was trying his best to drive it into the leader's chest. But this task was made nearly impossible with his armor. Hiccup managed to crawl towards Toothless and pick at the chains and shackles.

"It's okay," Hiccup cried to his dragon. It was too much for him to handle. I stood in the middle of the action, unsure of what to do. The Knight's helper was the same, though his chocolate Gronckle was lurching forward to do something. Draco sped out of the shadows at that moment, the Knight that saved me on his back. The teal eyed Night Fury slid to a stop by Christian and began helping him out, while his rider jumped off and started towards the helper.

There was so much going on that I couldn't wrap my mind around all of it. Unsure of what to do, I stopped standing dumbly by Christian and quickly followed the Knight to the leader's helper. Aroth came storming out of the back of the cave and joined us, sprinting as fast as a steamroller. He roared loudly and knocked the rider off of the Gronkle. The dragon managed to fly out of the cave without much harm, but he rider wasn't quite as lucky. He had managed to shove the Knight beside me into the wall pretty hard. He threw a punch to my gut. He was fighting his hardest but by then, Aroth had opened his jaws, forming a fireball, and I'm pretty sure you get the idea.

By the time that we had gotten rid of the helper, most of the action had died down. Viper was still intimidating the Monstrous Nightmare, but that was about it. Toothless was more or less freed from the metal chains, and he was then protecting Hiccup with all of his energy and strength. Draco slunk towards his rider's side. There was a metal lump laying in the center of the cave's floor.

It didn't move. The leader's armor was blackened and there were numerous punctures in the metal where Christian had used his knife. Parts of it, such as the chest, were torn open and bloody. All three of us, Hiccup, the Knight, and I walked up to the body and stared down. We didn't say anything. We'd won.

The Knight and I stared at each other in belief. He was the complete opposite of a Viking, yet he had helped us win. This was no ordinary Knight. First, he had saved me from certain death of drowning, then he had taken me to safety and didn't do anything to harm us, and then he helped us win. Hiccup didn't pay attention to him, he was too busy trying to calm himself down after the win. He had taken a single glance at the dead body of the leader and walked off. And to where, I had no idea. I didn't care.

My focus was locked on the Knight. My eyebrows furrowed with confusion and my head tipped to one side. I didn't even say anything about the win, I just asked, "Who ARE you, anyways?" There was a soft sigh behind the metal helmet. Neither of us had moved for a few moments after the question had come up.. until the Knight finally brought his hands up to the helmet. He pulled it off to reveal...

A scarred face with pale hair. I winced. "Lucan?" He looked undeniably tiny inside of the suit of metal, which is probably why it echoed whenever he walked. He was too small for his armor. There was an obviously semi-fresh gash across his left cheek and another one on his forehead. The Knights that had captured him had not been pleased with him. I had no idea what to do, so I did what first came to my mind. I threw my arms around him and hugged him. Well, what else was I supposed to do? What are you supposed to do when you find somebody that you presumed to be dead?

Lucan's arms rested limply on his sides. When I retracted from his cold armor, I noticed that he had a faint, pathetic smile and had opened his lips to say something, but he was immediately cut off as Hiccup murmured from a few feet away. "Guys, come here.."

I hadn't even noticed that Christian hadn't joined us in out victory until Hiccup said something. Lucan and I ran over to join Hiccup, who was knelt by the side of a small, crumpled form. Christian. There were long slash wounds all over his body where the Knight leader must have retaliated. By our feet, the thin-framed poor boy with stringy, black hair winced with pain. The cuts were deep and dark blood was slowly pouring out of them.

"Oh my God," I said aloud and knelt down by Hiccup. Christian's black eyes were wide open with horror and his lips tried to form words. He only managed to squeak, "Help me," out of all the words he wanted to say. He was dying right in front of our eyes. Hiccup and I tried to press down on the wounds to stop the bleeding, but there were too many cuts to make it stop. His chest heaved up and down as he gasped for breath that would not enter his lungs.

Viper hurried to see what the commotion was, his heads looming over us. He started wailing and moaning as if he knew that this was the end. He sniffed Christian's face and started sniffling. There were tears in Christian's blurry eyes that slipped down his bruised and crimson covered face. "Sorry guys," he whimpered to all of us. A final tear slid down his pale face and.. he just stopped moving. Time just seemed to stop then; nothing stirred, nothing made noises.

And then Viper finally broke down. He knew.

Christian was the one who had helped us the most. And here I had thought that he wasn't brave, wasn't strong. He was the bravest friend I had ever known.

He didn't make it.

We'd won, but we lost somebody that saved us. 


	34. Chapter ThirtyFour: The End

The outcome of the war was devastating. All of the buildings that us Vikings had spent many hours building were burned down into cinders. The one or two buildings that actually remained were just being set ablaze when we arrived from our own conflicts, or just about to collapse due to lack of support. There were lots of burned bodies, most of which were unidentifiable due to the flames that had probably engulfed them until their death. here were lots of stabbed bodies along the places that WEREN'T caught on fire, such as the beaches surrounding Berk or the mountain tops and valleys a fair distance away from our village. There were a lot of survivors that needed medical attention right away because they were suffering from serious dragon fire burns or wounds that were made from the Knights' swords and weapons.

The first thing that we (Hiccup, Lucan, and I) did before anything else was take Christian's body and put it somewhere safe. We ended up needing to have Toothless carry the lifeless body to the village with Hiccup. He carried him carefully and delicately in his large front paws while Hiccup steered him in the right direction. Lucan had insisted that he and Draco take the body back because of Toothless's.. disability, but Hiccup put up a good fight and he eventually gave up. Hiccup didn't trust Lucan in any way or form, much less trust him enough to carry a loved one's corpse home. Hiccup made us start flying around the area in search of any Viking that needed assistance. He told us that he would get rid of the remaining Knights. I barely had any time to calm myself down from the disaster we experienced, but I knew that we had to do what we were told.

Lucan, Draco, Aroth, and I all flew in complete silence the entire time. The only time that we could hear was the sound of the crashing waves below us and the wind passing by our ears. Even the dragons seemed to have an idea as to what was going on, because they were extraordinarily good tempered. Especially Aroth. It was like he sensed my despair and knew that he wouldn't help anything if he started acting up. Viper had followed Toothless, as if he believed that his rider would suddenly open his eyes and hop onto Viper's saddle. But then again, what was a dragon supposed to do once his rider passed away? Leave their best friend behind?

Lucan and I didn't find any Vikings that needed help, but we did come across Kirsten. She was laying on the beaches with Chomper laying next to her. From the sky, it looked like they were both dead and my heart immediately sunk, fearing that we had lost yet another close companion. But upon closer inspection, both of them seemed fine. A little burnt and cut and frazzled, but alive and okay nonetheless. The three of us continued searching the boundaries until we began to see the sun poking up out of the ocean's horizon line and our dragons begin to droop and slow. By then, we were completely exhausted and were like zombies on the backs of zombie dragons.

I had to make Lucan land in the forest, now more or less burned up, just so that there wouldn't be a massive mob of raging Vikings sent on him because of his clothing. Kirsten and I continued onto the village as soon as his feet touched the ground, where we soon learned about the conditions of the people we knew and the buildings we all had grown to love.

We lost many, many people. Things like widespread death wasn't good for small villages where essentially everybody knew everybody.. everyone that survived lost somebody close to them or a good friend. Anton, who had been found and rounded up by Hiccup after he had dropped off Christian's body, lost his dad. Anton's mother lost her dragon. Kirsten lost her little brother. Christian, if he had been alive to see the outcome, lost his close aunt. I lost Nora. We all lost Christian. In a way, this major disaster brought us all a little bit closer with each other. We could connect with each other; we could try and make the people around us feel better.

The posters were what effected me the most. There were Missing posters put up on temporary, cheaply made billboards throughout our village. There were all sorts of posters, some being "Missing: Father" or "Missing: Have you seen this person?" or maybe even "Missing: Reward given." It hurt so much looking at those things, knowing quite well that all of the people in those posters were dead. Some of the posters had pictures of dragons in them and it pained me thinking that people lost their dragons.. Anton, Kirsten, and I were all lucky enough to have our dragons with us the entire war. Some people weren't quite as lucky.

We held a massive burial the next day or two after the way in the burned forest for all of the bodies that we could find. Someone composed a list of names that they thought some of the bodies had belonged to. All of the survivors that were able to attend the funeral gathered together in the forest and mourned together. There was a special ceremony specifically for Christian. The person leading the burial talked about what Christian had done for our village and how he was going to be remembered.

Our village didn't fully go back to its normal self until a good month or so after the war. By then, builders had built new buildings for us. There weren't individual housing for each family because that would've taken too long, but there was a massive shelter constructed. Everyone stayed in this massive shelter, sleeping on cots and storing any belongings that they had saved from the fires underneath their beds. There was a central eating place built right across from the sleeping quarters. An area for housing dragons was built a good distance away from both of these buildings, but they were both within walking distance. There was an area just for Hiccup and Toothless, of course, because they were the leaders. The arena was rebuilt in the areas that needed some serious fixing up.

By then, the missing posters were taken down and people seemed to just move on. It wasn't long before we gained back out daily routines and wounds healed over. We had enough people to be able to maintain a medium-sized village, despite the many deaths that we had. We had enough dragons for the select few in the village as well. We were doing okay and recuperating rather well.

Viper, the Zippleback, stuck around Berk instead of flying off. It was hard for him to get over the death of the person he had chosen, but it helped that he was still loved. He was often praised by the survivors about how well he had done in that cave.. it gave his ego a bit of a boost. He was the first dragon to be used as a trainer. Hiccup often lead children to him and trained them for dragon riding that way. It was a fun way to learn for kids, using a gentle dragon such as Viper.

When things started to settle down, I eventually began to sneak Lucan into our village so that he wouldn't have to be rusticated in the forest. He used some of the clothing that I had found instead of the giant armor, so he blended in a little bit.. if it weren't for his scarred face. Little by little, we introduced him to more and more people, keeping that he was once a Knight secret from everyone that we encountered. He was accepted into our society as a Viking within a couple of weeks and he was able to live among the Vikings without any complications because of his past.

Living as a Viking proved to be a little bit hard for Lucan. He had grown so accustomed to being surrounded by jerks that pushed him around and beat him up because of his differences that he was more or less afraid of everyone that surrounded him. It took a while to coax himself into trusting the people around him. He was a little more than insecure, but he loosened up a little bit once he got to know us. He often joked around with me in private about the differences between being a Knight and a Viking, complaining that wearing armor and metal all of the time was a pain. He said that Vikings' wear was 'so much more comfortable.'

As a village, we all grew and changed after that incident with the Knights. We all learned a little bit about ourselves and the people around us. I learned that people weren't always what they seemed to be. If I hadn't gotten over being scared, I would have never met Lucan and I probably would have died because he wouldn't have saved me. We all learned about how tragic death really was when we lost lots of people that we loved and cherished. We got closer to those around us that survived the same things as we did. Our village got better as a whole because of a tragic incident. We all lost somebody important to us that day. But we cleaned up and moved on.

All we needed was a little trust. 


End file.
